


The Last of What the World Left You

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Animagus Draco Malfoy, Corvids, Down and Out Draco Malfoy, Getting Together, HP Animagus Fest 2021, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Hurt/Comfort, Isolation, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, POV Draco Malfoy, POV First Person, Pining, Post-War, Powerful Harry Potter, Sharing a Bed, Temporary Character Death, Thestrals (Harry Potter), Yorkshire, animal birth, past minor character death by suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:01:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29760708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: If the wizarding world won’t give Draco a second chance, he has a plan to survive: live in his Animagus form, a carrion crow, in the Forbidden Forest. Not only does Harry Potter come along and ruin it, he’s radiating a strange aura of power that Draco should probably fear, but doesn’t. With nowhere to go and a Life-Debt to his mother that Potter insists on repaying, Draco puts himself into the hands of the reclusive Boy Who Lived. Will the bleak corner of Yorkshire where Potter makes his home be another dead end or an unexpected refuge?
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 13
Kudos: 192
Collections: HP Animagus Fest 2021





	1. Autumn

**Author's Note:**

> This story fought me tooth and claw, and I almost gave up on it more than once. Thankfully, the lovely mods gave me some extra time to get it finished and edited into something close to my original vision for the story (albeit much, much longer). I’m excited to be a part of the fest and I hope those reading will enjoy my entry. Endless thanks to the brilliant M for the meticulous beta work and support.
> 
> Title borrowed from Noah Kahan’s song, [“Anyway"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HzpPl5a9EA).

It was autumn when I found myself at the end of the road.

The closed gates of Hogwarts loomed a few yards ahead of where I stood shivering in the twilight. For some time, I had been staring at my bare hands and the clouds of mist that formed and dissipated with my every breath. These were to be my final memories of my human self. I had made my decision.

_I’m still trying, Mother. I haven’t given up, I promise._

Despite losing everything after the war, I had soldiered on, fueled by a few small embers of youthful optimism. I’d believed that it was possible to make amends for the things I had done; I’d thought that I could claw my way back into respectability. At eighteen, the path immediately before me had looked bleak, but surely it would grow easier in time, wouldn’t it?

Three and a half years were enough to convince me that I was a fucking fool.

It was time to disappear, time to let the tangled depths of the Forbidden Forest swallow me whole. I closed my eyes and willed my body to shift, shrinking and darkening, as I had taught myself to do when wearing my own shape had become unbearable. When I had achieved the transformation for the first time after long months of study, I’d been pleased with what I’d seen in the dingy, spotted mirror of my room: a carrion crow, clever and nimble and utterly unremarkable. The seed of a plan was sown that day, and now it was time to reap it.

With a leap, I stretched my wings and beat into the air until I was above the treetops. The sky was blanketed with heavy clouds from horizon to horizon; it would be a dark night. I quickened my pace so that I could find a place to sleep far within the forest. The brisk air rushing over my feathers was exhilarating—a baptism that washed away the last traces of the past. I flew until I spotted a small clearing with my keen eyes and circled downward.

The rooks spotted me before my feet touched the ground.

Their harsh cries erupted all around me. I wheeled to ascend back to the darkening patch of open sky above, but the rooks perched in the trees began to dive towards me. I swerved away to fly between the tree trunks. The mob pursued me, still screaming in fury. Even without comprehending their calls, I understood that I had intruded on their roosting place.

In the fading light, I swerved between the gnarled trunks of the oaks and broken lower boughs of the pines which protruded like daggers. The crow instincts that I had acquired with this form told me that if the rooks caught me, I’d be lucky to escape with nothing worse than the loss of a few feathers. More likely, they would kill me.

I saw a brighter place ahead of me, another clearing. The large, dark shapes gathered there startled me at first, until I recognised them as a small herd of Thestrals. They were clustered closely together with their leathery wings tucked against their bodies. The rooks were almost upon me now, and my plan to escape into the open sky seemed too risky. Instead, I dove toward the herd, pulled in my wings at the last moment, and landed beneath them.

Careful not to get trod on, I hopped toward the middle of the group. Thankfully, the Thestrals didn’t seem perturbed by my presence among their slender legs. The rooks, however, were still seeking me. One landed beside the herd and screeched in triumph when it saw me.

“Leave him be.”

It was a man’s voice, sharp and commanding. The rooks immediately ceased their calls.

“Go on. He’s no threat to you. Go.”

I watched the rook on the ground take off, its wings rustling the dead leaves on the ground. The Thestrals scattered slowly and in unison, as if they had collectively decided to do so. Fear took hold of me again and told me to flee while I had the chance, but the sight of the man standing near the edge of the clearing immobilised me.

He barely looked like a man at all.

I cocked my head, trying to see him more clearly in the growing gloom. His figure was unmistakably that of a human, yet it also seemed like a silhouette—dark in form, yet faintly illuminated from behind. Or was he glowing from within, like a burning log? My crow’s mind could make no sense of it. As he stepped closer, I felt the magic pouring off of him, thick and molten. I flapped my wings once, but only managed to hop backwards a bit, as if I was caught in his gravity like a moon.

“Change back,” he said, and I again _felt_ the authority in his voice as much as I heard it with my ears. “I know you’re not really a crow. Turn back, or I _will_ force you to.”

I couldn’t disobey. If I’d been in my human form, I would have found it terrifying. It would have reminded me all too much of another man (if you could even call him that) whose orders I’d been taught to follow without hesitation. Yet the one before me now didn’t ooze the Dark Lord’s cruelty and malevolence; it felt like I was complying for my own good.

Perhaps that should have made it even more worrisome.

When I was back in my human form, I found myself facing away from him. With a sinking feeling, I realised that my plan had crumbled to dust in less than an hour, and now I was alone in the Forbidden Forest. I spun around to face the man behind me, reaching into my pocket for my wand.

It was Harry Potter.

I staggered back a step at the sight of him, and not because he still had the strange silhouette appearance that I had seen in my crow form. In fact, he looked much like he did when I last saw him, sitting in the Great Hall after the Battle of Hogwarts looking utterly exhausted and shattered.

No, my shock came from seeing him at all. Potter had not been spotted in public since that day. Despite the fact that his friends had told the papers that he was well and staying out of the spotlight, wild rumours had been circulating about him. He’d broken down from the strain of the war. He was working undercover for the Aurors. He was dead.

Had Potter been here, in the Forbidden Forest, for the past three years? Had he never left Hogwarts after the battle?

He looked as surprised to see me as I did him—surprised and more than a little displeased.

“ _Malfoy_. What the fuck are you doing here? Tell me now,” he added when I hesitated.

Seeing him through human eyes eliminated the force of his command, I noticed. I raised my chin in defiance. There was no reason for me to trust him. This plan I had concocted was my last hope, and I wasn’t about to let him interfere with it.

“I’m not doing any harm,” I hedged. “The forest is much more of a danger to me than I am to it. I just want to stay here tonight.”

“You should leave now, before it gets dark. The rooks will come back for you as soon as I leave.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Maybe I’ll take my chances.” I turned away and began walking toward the edge of the clearing.

“Maybe I’ll take you to the Headmistress and see how she feels about you trespassing here. I’m sure the Aurors would be happy to take you off her hands after that.”

I froze, fear gripping me like talons. After a moment of panicked calculation, I decided that I would need to explain myself after all, just enough to convince Potter to leave me alone. I pivoted to face him.

“Look, I don’t have anywhere else to go, Potter. I’ll stay away from the rooks. I’ll stay away from the school. I ran out of money for a room and I knew I’d be better off here than sleeping rough somewhere.”

He narrowed his eyes at me.

“God, Malfoy, you’re pathetic if you think I believe you came all the way to Scotland for a place to sleep. No one would look twice at a crow anywhere outside Diagon or Hogsmeade, but you’re too much of a coward to be around Muggles, aren’t you?” Potter shook his head in disgust. “I’m going to take a guess and say you came to a place with no magical people because you aren’t registered as an Animagus.”

I stared at him blankly, startled that he’d seen through my story so quickly. “That’s none of your business,” I said.

“It is now. Where’s your mother?” Potter demanded.

I recoiled, believing for a moment that he was taunting me, but as the seconds dragged on while he waited for my answer, it occurred to me that he hadn’t heard.

Closing my eyes, I forced myself to tell him. “My mother took her own life. Almost two years ago.”

“Oh.” Potter released the word with a heavy gust of breath that seemed to leave him deflated. “I… I didn’t know.”

I nodded in acknowledgement. Was he really so cut off from the magical world that he hadn’t heard? It was on the front page of the _Prophet_ , for fuck’s sake. I saw the headline and her picture with my own eyes—though only for as long as it took me to draw my wand and cast an _Incendio_ at it.

Merlin, maybe Potter _had_ been hiding in the Forbidden Forest all this time.

While we were staring at each other, at a momentary impasse, I looked him over. He certainly dressed the part, with sturdy boots and a thick coat. He didn’t seem to be too fussed about his grooming, either—hair shaggy around his face and jaw darkened by several days without a shaving charm.

I watched silently as Potter ran a hand over his mouth, seeming to struggle with something in his mind. Finally, he sighed in resignation and stepped toward me.

“I don’t have any Galleons to give you so you could get a place to stay for the night.”

“A hundred Galleons wouldn’t do me any good, Potter, if no one wants to give me a room.”

“Right. You can come home with me. Just until you figure something else out.” He held up his hands to stop me from interrupting. “I owe your mother for helping me during the battle. I owe her my life and I… can feel the magic of that debt weighing on me. Giving you a place to stay is the least I can do to repay her, I suppose.”

Potter had turned his head to look into the trees while he’d spoken of my mother, palm pressed to his chest and his face twisted with pain or grief. He held out his arm to me.

I kept my hands at my sides. “How do I know you aren’t taking me to the Aurors?”

“I’m not. Would you rather I leave you for the rooks to find? I think you know there are much worse things here, too.”

I almost argued that I’d be safe from those things in the upper branches of a tree, but I decided that if Potter was really offering me shelter, I’d be a fool to turn it down.

“Where are we going?” I asked as I linked elbows with him.

“You’ll see,” Potter replied.

He spun us into the darkness.

***

Potter lived in a shed, it turned out.

“It’s not a shed, it’s a field barn,” he corrected me, releasing my arm and striding forward.

I hurried after him. “Living in a barn isn’t much of a step up from a shed.”

“It’s not a barn anymore, you pillock. I turned it into a house. And you’re welcome to sleep outside if it’s not grand enough for you,” Potter snapped.

I kept my mouth shut and looked around instead. The light was almost gone, but there was an unmistakable sense of emptiness around me. Treeless hills loomed over the house, and the only sounds to be heard were a stream flowing nearby and the last evening calls of some hidden birds. The house itself was not large, just a tall, sturdy rectangle of stone with a small lean-to on one side. There was no sign of habitation on the outside and no lights in the windows.

Potter led the way through the unpainted wooden door of the lean-to and shut it behind me with a bang. Without warning, my bicep was caught in his strong grip. His voice growled close to my ear in the darkness.

“It goes without saying that you’re not to tell anyone where or how I live, Malfoy.”

“Who the fuck would I tell?” I sneered, trying to pull my arm away. “It’s not like anyone would believe me, even if I did.”

That seemed to satisfy Potter enough to unhand me. A light above us switched on. We were in a small, windowless vestibule with a stone floor. Potter took off his boots and hung up his coat, then left through a door that was a step higher than the entry. I rushed to do the same and follow him.

The main room of the house wasn’t large, but it was open to the rafters on one side, making it seem bigger. There was a loft over the other half of the room, accessed by a steep set of stairs like you’d find on a ship. A kitchen of sorts was tucked beneath the loft, with an old range and some mismatched wooden cupboards. The only other furniture was a small table with two chairs and a ratty armchair, set in the corner near the range. The rest of the room had trunks and boxes piled around the edges, but was otherwise empty.

“Are you hungry, or did you manage to catch some mice or something before the rooks chased you?” Potter asked over his shoulder as he lit the range.

“I’m not hungry. Thank you.”

I didn’t know what to do with myself while he made his dinner, so I edged over to the armchair to be out of his way. He glanced at me now and then while he cooked, but ignored me completely once he sat down to eat his tin of Muggle soup right out of the saucepan. It was obvious, however, that he was agitated by my presence.

“Where is this?” I asked when he stood to take his pot to the sink.

“Yorkshire. And before you get any ideas, you won’t be able to Apparate back in once you leave. I’ve made it Unplottable and the wards are set so far from the house that you wouldn’t be able to see it even if you came back to the general area.”

“Do you think I was planning to come back for a visit sometime in the future?” I asked with a laugh.

“You might. And you might decide to bring someone with you. Someone from the _Prophet_ ,” Potter said, rounding on me.

I glared back at him. “I wouldn’t. _You_ may have forgotten how much I owe you—more than you owed my mother—but I haven’t. I have no intention of running off and telling the wizarding world that I’ve found their elusive hero hiding in a barn. Salazar, please tell me that you put a bathroom in, at least.”

Potter pointed to a door on the same wall as the one to the vestibule. “Through there. I’m going to bed. Don’t poke around my stuff.”

I got out of the armchair to follow him toward the stairs. “Wait, where should I sleep?”

“On the floor, I guess. Or in the chair,” he shrugged, “though I should warn you it’s not very comfortable for sleeping in. Change back into a crow and perch somewhere. That’s what you were going to do tonight, anyway, right?”

He climbed to the loft, leaving me standing at the foot of the stairs. Away from the range, I was already starting to get cold. I went back to the armchair and pulled my knees up against my chest. Above my head, the floorboards creaked under Potter’s footsteps. I waited until he seemed to be in bed, then went to the bathroom.

Like the main room, it was quite spartan: a tiny space tucked under the sloping roof of the lean-to with a stone floor, but it was clean. I splashed some water on my face and found a towel to dry it off. There was no mirror above the sink.

The lights in the main room had extinguished themselves (or maybe Potter had put them out) while I was in the bathroom. I cast a _Lumos_ to get back to the armchair, then sat in the dark for a time, asking myself if this was all a fucked-up dream.

Only this morning, I had got rid of my few remaining belongings—a couple of changes of clothing and some other worthless things—intending to live out my days as a crow. And at the end of the same day, I was in Harry Potter’s house, which barely had enough comforts and conveniences to deserve the name. I had so many questions about why he was apparently living alone in Yorkshire that I forgot to think about my own situation until my numb fingers and toes brought me back to myself.

There didn’t seem to be anything at hand that I could Transfigure into a blanket, and Potter was right about the chair. My neck and back were already stiff. With nothing to cover myself and the fire in the range giving off very little heat anymore, I had no choice but to transform for the night. The back of the chair proved to be a comfortable spot to cling to. I ruffled my feathers a bit and tucked my black beak under my wing.

Thankfully, birds don’t dream.

***

The clatter of the range woke me. I blinked my eyes, feeling disorientated. In the periphery of my vision, I saw that strange light again that seemed to emanate from Potter. I felt his magic again, too, warmer than the heat thrown off by a red-hot stove. Rather than look at him directly, which was bloody disconcerting, I hopped to the floor and transformed back into my human form.

“Good morning,” I said, attempting to catch his eye.

Potter ignored me, so I went to the loo. When I returned, there was a pot of tea and two mugs on the table. It was as much of an invitation to breakfast as I was likely to get, so I sat down and waited for Potter to join me. Five minutes later, he placed a plate of scrambled eggs and a slice of buttered toast in front of me. I waited until he brought his own plate to the table to begin—however awkward this was, it wouldn’t hurt to display some manners.

“Do you have any milk?” I asked after pouring my tea.

Potter finally looked me in the eye, glaring balefully. “It’s not a fucking bed and breakfast, Malfoy. No, I don’t have milk.”

I murmured an apology, and the rest of the meal passed in complete silence. Potter kept his eyes on his plate while he bolted his food, then sprawled in the armchair with his eyes closed after he was done.

“Can I do the washing up for you?” I asked after carrying my dishes to the sink. The dirty saucepan from Potter’s soup last night was still sitting there, as were a few other sticky-looking dishes.

“No, I’ll do them,” Potter said, gripping the arms of the chair. “Can you just get the fuck out of my house, please?”

A cold wave of shock washed over me. I hadn’t expected him to send me on my way so soon.

“All right,” I said quietly.

“I don’t mean you can’t stay anymore,” Potter explained. He had opened his eyes, but he still wouldn’t look at me. “Can you go for a walk or something? I’m not used to having another person here, and it’s sort of weirding me out.”

I leaned against the sink with relief. “Oh, I see. Of course I can do that. Is there any particular direction I should go?”

“Just moorland in all directions,” Potter said. “Stay inside the wards—you’ll be able to see them faintly. I’d rather not have to come looking for you if you wander through them by accident and can’t get back in.”

With a nod that Potter probably didn’t notice, I found my shoes and coat and went outside, closing the front door behind me as quietly as I could. If I had ever tried to imagine how Potter was faring these days, it certainly wouldn’t have been like this—a contradictory tangle of irritability and awkwardness that could be knocked off kilter by having one houseguest for a night.

Well, perhaps it was the fact that the houseguest was me, specifically. I set off on my walk to give him some space.

The air was still wet with morning mist below the low clouds. The house sat on a hillside enclosed by a drystone wall. If it was once a meadow, it was now becoming overgrown with rough grasses and heather encroaching from the moor. Along the bottom of the hill, a narrow stream emerged from a dense grove of bare trees in one direction and twisted away out of sight in the other. On the far side of it, another hill rose, rocky and steep.

I decided to climb the hill on this side of the stream. I found a place where the wall had fallen, then trudged upwards until there was a clear view before me. Panting from the climb, I looked around.

There wasn’t much to see but stretches of dull-coloured moorland and the faint shapes of other hills in the haze. Whatever his reasons, Potter had chosen a damn bleak and lonely place to hole up. I couldn’t see another house, much less a village, from where I stood.

After a while, I grew restless and explored a bit more, keeping the wall in sight so I wouldn’t get lost. I wandered down to the stream next, but there wasn’t much to do there besides throw stones into the shallow water. Other than the curl of smoke drifting from the stove pipe, there were no traces of human activity to be seen outside. I wondered if Potter did anything besides eat and sleep here.

I didn’t return to the house until the middle of the afternoon, cold and exhausted from tramping around. Potter seemed to have gone back to bed, so I took the opportunity to do the same on the top of his armchair, as a crow again.

He seemed resigned to seeing me there when he came back to the kitchen to make dinner, but we didn’t speak beyond the few questions I ventured to ask about why he’d chosen to settle in this remote place, which he flatly refused to answer. He retreated upstairs again after dinner, leaving me to do the washing up and then curl up in the armchair until the fire in the range burned down again. The silence of the house and the empty hills outside felt deafening. I didn’t understand how Potter could live here alone and not go a bit mad.

I was almost relieved when I began to feel drowsy. I transformed again and welcomed the oblivion of sleep.

***

The next few days followed the same blueprint as the first one. After breakfast each morning, Potter gave me a pointed look that sent me towards the door. I spent cool, drizzly days under an Impervius Charm, roaming a little further afield as I got my bearings. When the sky began to grow dim or the rain too heavy, I returned to the house and kept as silent and inconspicuous as I could until Potter cooked dinner. There wasn’t any conversation, but he didn’t seem to be as irritated with my presence as he’d been the first day. I took it as a sign that I was tolerated for the time being, if not welcomed.

The most interesting discovery I made was on my third day, when I followed the stream into the trees and found a small herd of Thestrals milling around there. The mares and yearlings ignored me as I watched them from what I hoped was a safe distance, but the stallion immediately moved between me and his herd. I didn’t linger long. If he turned on me, I wouldn’t stand a chance, in either human or crow form.

I asked Potter about the Thestrals at dinner.

“The herds at Hogwarts had become so numerous that they were fighting over territory, sometimes brutally,” Potter explained. “After I bought this land, I got permission to bring a herd here as long as I convinced them to stay within my wards. Otherwise, I’d have to keep them Disillusioned to keep them out of sight of Muggles.”

“You… _convinced_ them to stay here?” I asked. “How did you move them here in the first place?”

Potter shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “They were happy to come here, when I asked. And they do as I tell them, now they’re here,” he said tersely.

_Like the rooks did._ I had more questions about that, but he was so tetchy when asked anything about himself, I didn’t dare.

As the days went by, I noticed that Potter seemed to have an uncanny connection with animals besides the Thestrals. There were a few ravens who liked to visit and perch atop Potter’s house, and arrived with an unholy racket that never failed to startle me. He rushed outside whenever he heard their croaking and always returned to the house with a pleased look, as if his favourite neighbours had stopped by for a chat.

He had no human visitors. I never saw an owl arrive, nor did Potter seem to have one of his own. There was no fireplace to connect to the Floo Network. The only time he left was to go buy food and supplies, and he locked me out of the house while he was gone.

It was all very strange and vaguely distressing to see him live like this.

***

Potter became indifferent to my presence after he’d had time to adjust. He still made it clear that he didn’t want me hanging around the house all day, but he was concerned enough about my safety to warn me to keep an eye out for falcons if I decided to transform—they were known to attack crows.

He didn’t ask me any questions about myself until my third week as his guest, when I decided to make myself useful around the house. It was the least I could do to repay his hospitality, debt or no debt to my mother. The sight of me doing menial work seemed to rouse his curiosity at last.

“Where did you learn to do that?” he demanded when he saw me clean the bathroom and cast laundering charms on his towels.

“I’ve been taking whatever jobs I could get for the past few years, Potter. Cleaning toilets was far from the most disgusting job I had, believe me. And despite what you think of me, I did try to find a job with Muggles, but I didn’t have the right documents.”

“You really took work like that? Wasn’t it—”

“Humiliating? Of course it was, at first. But it was better than letting Mother and myself starve.”

Potter narrowed his eyes. “And do you think you should be forgiven, Malfoy? Welcomed back into decent society now, just because you’ve suffered?”

I shook my head. My mother’s thin, tormented face rose before my eyes. I threw the towel I was holding on the floor and fled from the house, shifting shape and launching myself into the sky from the front step.

When I returned at dusk, shoulders aching from hours of flight, Potter appeared at the railing of the loft, as if he’d been listening for me. I ignored him and collapsed in the chair, but I couldn’t help trying to explain myself when he came downstairs.

“No, I don’t think anyone should forgive me—unless they want to. I apologised at my trial for the things I did, and I meant it. I truly meant it, Potter. Do you think it’s really too much to ask that _someone_ take a chance on me, even one fucking person, so I can show I’ve changed?”

“What do you want them to do, exactly? Write a letter to the _Prophet_ to tell the world you’re a better person now?”

“No, just a proper job, not whatever stupid tasks they need doing for a day or a week or a month! A way forward out of the fucking hole I fully acknowledge I dug for myself.”

“And you tried? Really tried?”

“Of course I did! I tried so many times that every magical establishment in London has threatened to hex me if I show my face there again.”

“You really don’t have anywhere else to go, if I tell you to leave.” 

He didn’t phrase it as a question, but I shook my head, nonetheless, too humiliated to speak.

“Honestly, Malfoy, if it weren’t for the debt I owe your mother, I’m not sure I could bring myself to care.”

Stung by his indifference, I fled to the bathroom and stayed there, huddled on the stone floor, until my body and mind were numb.

***

I was afraid Potter would tell me to leave in the morning, but he only seemed thoughtful, if distant. He spent more time outside after our row, warily ceding the house to me. It was the first time he’d left me alone inside, and his trust felt like a small gift. 

I tried to keep busy with a few chores and the stack of books I’d found in the corner, but it didn’t feel right being in the house by myself. I usually became restless after an hour or so and went outside for a walk.

Once, I spotted Potter from a distance with the Thestrals while I walked along the stream. He was playing with two of the yearlings, letting them chase him around in an open area beneath the trees. It felt too close to spying on a private moment, something Potter wouldn’t want me to see, so I turned around and walked up to the moor instead.

It was well into November by then, and there’d been several light coatings of snow already. I’d cajoled Potter into loaning me some warmer clothes, but I knew the weather would only get harsher when winter truly arrived. My feet crunched over the frozen grass as I walked over the hills, keeping a fast pace to stay warm. The regular meals and exercise in the past few weeks had improved my health and stamina greatly.

I had finally learnt that Potter had bought this parcel of land when a nearby farm changed hands, then (I deduced) had warded it so well that even the Muggles forgot it existed. With what little he’d told me, I estimated that he’d moved here some time before Mother died. He didn’t say where he’d been living before that.

Another week went by, then another, and Potter didn’t kick me out. I wanted to express my gratitude somehow, and the opportunity finally came one morning when I saw Potter writing out a shopping list.

“Let me do it this time,” I offered. “I know you hate going.”

Potter directed a scowl at his list that confirmed my statement. He tended to put it off until his cupboards were almost empty and we were down to eating rice and tinned peas. I tried not to complain, not only because I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but because I also knew that, unlike him, I could find food outside that was palatable to a crow if I was really desperate. The only explanation that I’d got was that he didn’t like going to towns and being around a lot of people.

“I would be happy to take over the task for you,” I coaxed. “I’ve bought food in Muggle shops before, in London.”

What I didn’t tell him was that, after six weeks here, I desperately needed a change of scenery.

After some hesitation, he agreed and handed me the list with a small stack of Muggle paper money. He walked me to the edge of his wards so that he could set them to allow me back in without him, then took me by Side-Along Apparition to a narrow alley in Leeds. After pointing me in the direction of the supermarket down the street, he watched me go with an unreadable expression.

The streets and shops were decorated for Christmas, and I took my time walking from the Apparition Point to the supermarket. It was lovely to feast my eyes on all the lights and colours after spending my days in Potter’s dim and dreary barn-house. Once I reached my destination, it took a considerable amount of time to find the correct things in the aisles. I also took the liberty of adding some biscuits and fresh fruit to the trolley, which were things he never bothered to get himself.

Potter might be inclined to deny himself better food, but I wasn’t, if given the chance.

It was well past lunch time when I hauled the bags (aided by a few discreet Lightening Charms) to the Apparition Point and back to Potter’s doorstep. He flung the door open when he heard me arrive. When I held out some of the bags to him, I noticed the strange look on his face.

“What?”

“You were gone so long,” he said.

“I’m sorry. I was looking at the Christmas decorations, and then it took some time to find everything on the list. Merlin help me, why are there twenty different varieties of beans, and in different size tins, too?”

Potter still didn’t budge from the entry, blocking my way.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” he said quietly. “I thought you took the money and…”

I stared at him, confused at first, then furious that he thought I’d return his kindness with betrayal.

“I wouldn’t have lasted long on a couple of hundred pounds, would I?” I said icily and pushed past him into the house.

I heard him follow me inside and close the door. With a pointed look, I took the receipt and the money left from what he’d given me and slammed them down on the table.

“Look,” he said as I started putting the food away, “I know you can’t be happy stuck here in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do and only me. I thought you’d want to go, if you had the chance to.”

I shoved tins into an open cupboard. “I could have left anytime, Potter. I could go live in the Forbidden Forest right now, if I wanted to. That was my plan before you found me, you know.”

“You were going to live there? Permanently? In your Animagus form?”

“Yes,” I growled. “I was going to become a fucking carrion crow and literally live like an animal, rather than spend one more day in the magical world. I told you what it was like, trying to survive there. Did you really think I was going to take your money and run back at the first opportunity? And since when are you so eager for me to stay, Potter? Don’t you want your blissful, noble solitude back?”

“No, I want you to stay.”

His words startled me out of my anger, and I spun around to face him. “Why? Why would you want _me_ of all people to live here with you?”

Potter met my eyes. “Because you aren’t afraid of me, even though I’m... _different_ now. I can tell you see it, when you’re a crow. I can tell by the way you’ll only look at me out of the corner of your eye.”

I considered what to say for a moment. Leaving wasn’t an option I wanted to take, no matter how much Potter’s accusation had hurt me. I held his gaze until I was certain he was being sincere.

“Yes, I can see it. But I can tell that it’s not Dark magic. I don’t think you’re a danger to me.” I studied him silently for a moment, from his familiar, round glasses to his socks with a hole in the toe. “You look like the same, old Potter to me the rest of the time—just as unkempt and belligerent as you always were.”

He attempted a smile, but it wavered quickly.

“So, you’ll stay?”

The room seemed to hold its breath around us while he waited for my answer. I knew, somehow, that by accepting I would be putting myself in Potter’s hands—he’d already helped me more than he’d needed to, so I would be the one indebted to him once again. Not only that, there was still so much I didn’t understand about him.

Two months ago, I had found myself alone at the end of the road I’d been on since the war ended, out of good options and driven by despair. Somehow, the step I was about to take now felt much more momentous, more frightening, and yet I barely hesitated.

“Yes, I’ll stay.”


	2. Winter

I wouldn’t have realised it was Christmas Eve if Potter hadn’t disappeared for an hour, then returned to the house with an enormous hamper in his arms.

I watched from the armchair, where I was reading _Quidditch through the Ages_ —the selection of books here was limited, but it gave me a feeling of nostalgia to be reading this particular one again.

Potter grimaced when he saw my eyes following him as he set the hamper on the table.

“Hermione and Ron. They bring one for me every Christmas Eve, to give me a bit of holiday cheer. And to make sure I haven’t kicked the bucket, I guess,” he added with a wry laugh.

I rose eagerly from the chair to stand beside him and watch him unpack the hamper. There wasn’t much novelty in my routine, even with my weekly trips to Leeds now. I said a silent prayer for mince pies.

There were mince pies, and a Christmas pudding and some biscuits and homemade preserves. Beneath the food, several wrapped gifts lined the bottom of the hamper. Potter wordlessly lifted out each one and examined it before laying it on the table. The reminder of the world that he no longer belonged to clearly pained him. Instinctively, I lifted my hand towards his shoulder.

He flinched away from the touch, like a startled animal. I wondered how long it had been since someone touched him, deliberately or not. Whether he moved away from surprise or repulsion, he didn’t say anything about it, instead carrying the food to the cupboards. The gifts he took upstairs without opening them.

I mustered the courage to ask him about his friends the next day, when we went outside to walk off our full stomachs. Like two children, we had agreed to make a meal of the bounty from the hamper, though I’d secretly longed for roast turkey and gravy for a proper Christmas dinner. It hadn’t occurred to me to buy anything special for the day, despite the ubiquitous signs of the holiday in the shops.

“I don’t suppose they visit you other times, bearing hampers?” I asked after we’d agreed that mince pies were the best Christmas food. “I never imagined Weasley would turn out to be an accomplished baker.”

“He learnt from his mum, I’m sure,” Potter murmured. “No, they only come for Christmas and my birthday. Things have changed between us. They have their lives, and I have mine.”

I glanced at him as we walked through the snow that had fallen a few days before. His lips were pressed together and his eyes locked on the landscape in front of him. Even so, I couldn’t resist one more question.

“How long has it been like that?”

Potter exhaled heavily, his breath making a cloud in front of him. “Since the battle. _Everything_ changed that day, and now they can’t—”

I stopped walking. “Can’t or won’t?”

Whatever had happened during the battle, or whatever changes he’d undergone since then, I found it difficult to fathom why two people who had been so devoted to Potter would deliberately distance themselves from him.

 _Because you aren’t afraid of me_ , he’d said to me. Why the hell would Granger and Weasley be afraid of him? What had he done? Or maybe the proper question was, what had he done to himself?

Potter didn’t answer me. He walked on, giving a sharp shake of his head to indicate that he didn’t want to discuss this anymore. I huffed with frustration. Hadn’t I agreed to keep his secrets and stay with him? Apparently, it wasn’t enough for him to confide in me.

On a whim, I transformed and surprised him by flying low over his head. He ducked down, swearing and covering his head with his arms. I wheeled in the air above him, craning my neck to look at him directly, steeling myself for the strangeness of his form to my crow’s eyes. From a distance, he still looked a bit like a walking shadow, though the silhouette impression was lessened by the bright sunshine.

I descended, tightening the radius of my flight with each loop, until I was beating my wings only a few yards from Potter’s head. 

“What are you doing, you git?” he said. “Come back down! You’re making me dizzy.”

The words, though irritated rather than commanding, pulled me towards the ground, my own muscles bending to his will without hesitation. His magic flowed around me like a warm updraft. I landed in front of him and looked up, turning my head this way and that to study him some more. Now that I’d been forcing myself to look for a few minutes, Potter’s usual appearance seemed to flicker through the shadows at times.

I changed back and met his gaze head on.

“I think your friends are cowards.”

Potter’s eyes widened, then he pivoted in the snow and strode away in the direction of the Thestrals’ grove.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about, Malfoy,” he shouted without looking back. “No fucking idea.”

I let him go and walked a few more laps around the house before going inside to make a pot of tea. It was becoming more and more clear to me as time went on that Potter felt he needed to isolate himself. I was furious on his behalf that his so-called friends couldn’t offer any more support than a Christmas hamper and biannual visits.

I assumed our meagre festivities were over, since neither of us could think about eating again that day. But before he went to bed, Potter brought down a lumpy bundle of deep blue wool.

“I think you should have this,” he said holding it out to me. “Molly Weasley sends me one every year, but I have more than I need. They’re really warm.”

It was a jumper—handmade, by the looks of it—with a small, silvery “H” worked into the pattern over the heart, like a monogram. The weight of it told me it would indeed be warm.

“This was made for you,” I protested. “It was a gift.”

“Take it,” he insisted, “so I won’t have to listen to you complain about being cold.”

I gave in and pulled the jumper over my head. “Thank you.”

To my surprise, he lifted his hand and pressed his forefinger to my chest for a couple of seconds.

“Merry Christmas, Malfoy,” he said with a satisfied expression, then left to go to bed.

When I took off the jumper later, before transforming to sleep, I noticed that the silver “H” had been turned into an “D.”

***

Bitter weather arrived with the new year. Storms rolled across Yorkshire from the North Sea, blanketing the hills in snow. My daily walks became shorter and my flight time longer, since my oily feathers kept me warmer and dryer than any coat or Warming Charm could. From above, I followed hare tracks in the snow and dropped pebbles onto the frozen edges of the stream.

Spending the short hours of daylight in a house with few windows was even more monotonous than stomping or flying around Potter’s little piece of Yorkshire, I soon found.

“Don’t you get bored?” I asked Potter one morning when sleet was pattering against the window panes. “Don’t you have the urge to just _go_ somewhere, anywhere?”

“I find things to do. And I _do_ go other places, obviously, because I found you in the Forbidden Forest.”

“Ah, right. What about getting a wireless? It might be nice to have some music.”

“I’m not really keen on keeping up with what’s going on with the magical world, and a Muggle radio wouldn’t work here. There’s too much magic around.”

 _And most of it’s coming from you._ I wasn’t bold enough to say it aloud; we hadn’t talked about how much bloody magic was radiating off him, and I knew I wouldn’t get an explanation if I brought it up.

While we ate breakfast, I made more suggestions for things to do while we were stuck inside, but Potter brushed them all aside with one grumbled excuse or another. It seemed I would have to keep myself occupied.

I started spending more time walking around the city and poking into different shops when I did the weekly shopping. Knowing that Potter always gave me more money than was needed for food, I started bringing home other things: cheap paperback books, jigsaw puzzles, a deck of Muggle playing cards. Potter didn’t do more than raise his eyebrows at my purchases. He must have decided it was a small price to pay to keep me out of his way.

As a kind of retaliation for his indifference, I invited him to help me with the puzzles and teach me any card games he knew. I found a long-forgotten thrill in goading him out of his usual routine, challenging him, making him rethink his ways. And if I was honest with myself, I might have admitted that it wasn’t for his sake alone that I did it.

I rather enjoyed his company—when he wasn’t being a surly bugger.

Potter brought meat to the Thestrals now that their usual prey was holed up in burrows and tree hollows. He didn’t tell me where he got the meat, but I suspected it was from a magical establishment because I caught him removing a Glamour on his way back to the house once. I didn’t ask what kind of animal the meat came from, either. One look at it told me that it wasn’t fit for human consumption.

He let me tag along when he fed them, and though it was a grisly chore, I didn’t mind. By spending more time with the herd, I was starting to recognise each Thestral, and they in turn were growing more accustomed to my presence. The stallion still eyed me warily, but the yearlings came up and butted my shoulders with their leathery black noses by my second visit. I tried not to think about how close their long fangs were to my flesh.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen them flying around,” I said while Potter was tossing small pieces of meat to the creatures, one at a time, from a metal pail.

“They do, but they usually hunt at dawn and dusk, and they spend the rest of the time by the stream. They wander up to the moors in the warmer months.”

“What do they eat? I’ve never seen anything larger than a hare around here.”

“Hares, squirrels—though I think they’ve cleared the grove of those now—and birds.”

I almost choked.

“ _Birds?_ ”

“Don’t worry, you’re safe,” Potter said. “They know you’re not really a crow.”

“I’m not sure I trust them not to mistake me for one,” I retorted sharply. “For fuck’s sake, Potter, I’ve perched in the trees right above them!”

“I wouldn’t let them hurt you, and the Thestrals would never disobey me.”

He said it with such authority and conviction that I didn’t contradict him. Even if I didn’t understand how the Thestrals could make the distinction, I trusted Potter and his uncanny rapport with them. With grim amusement, I realised that I was probably safer here in the wildest part of the Dales with Potter than I’d been since I was a young teenager.

“Do they have names?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t named them. They aren’t pets,” he replied scathingly.

I huffed a laugh—as he’d said it, he’d been pushing away the head of a hungry mare, just as one would a large dog. She had snuck up behind him to reach the pail of meat.

“I mean, do they have names for themselves? You seem to be able to communicate with them, beyond telling them what to do.”

Potter seemed surprised by my observation. “Yes, a little. They do have names, but they’re not something I could translate.”

As if on cue, one of the Thestrals gave a shrill call, and others followed one by one. Potter watched them fondly.

“They’re introducing themselves to you.”

“They can understand me, too?”

“Yes, of course. They’re very intelligent. And hungry. Sod off, you’ll get yours,” he said to the persistent mare. “I know you’re eating for two, but that’s no reason to jump the queue. There’s enough for everyone.”

I could see that the mare was noticeably fuller around the belly than the others, now that Potter mentioned it.

“When will she foal?” I asked, taking a scrap from the pail to lure her away from Potter. She pranced after me as I backed away and nimbly took the meat from my outstretched hand.

“Early spring. You can come with me to watch, if you like. I try to keep an eye on them, just in case something goes wrong and I need to intervene.”

I looked into the milky, pupil-less eyes of the mare. “Maybe. I don’t think I’d be of any help to you, but it might be an interesting thing to see.”

“It’s amazing.”

When I looked over, Potter was wearing a proper grin, the first I’d seen since I had arrived here.

***

On what would have been my mother’s forty-seventh birthday, I struggled to think of a way to commemorate it. Her grave, marked only by a small stone with her initials and date of her death, was far away in a pauper’s cemetery near London. Even if I visited it, I didn’t have any money of my own to buy flowers to place there.

I settled at the table with a scrap of parchment and a quill while Potter was out walking, and drew her a wreath of roses instead. Then I added other things that reminded me of her: the crystal perfume bottles on her dressing table at the Manor, her tea set with the handles shaped like the neck and head of a swan, her namesake flower.

Potter came back and noticed what I was doing on his way to warm up by the range.

“It’s Mother’s birthday. I was just drawing some things of hers that I remember from my childhood. She loved pretty things. Even after… _you know._ I tried to bring her little gifts when I could to make her eyes light up. Coming back to wherever we were living wasn’t always pleasant, but it wasn’t so bad when I had something to give her.”

“Why wasn’t it pleasant to come home? Because of where you lived?” Potter asked. He had settled in the armchair, waiting for the kettle to boil.

I swallowed the bitterness rising in my throat.

“No, because I often had to tell my mother that I was sacked _again_. And we might have to move out of whatever hole we were lodging in _again_ because I couldn’t pay the rent. And then I’d have to watch her skip a meal _again_ so that I’d get enough food in me to be able to go out and look for work the next day.”

“Fucking Christ.” Potter curled forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I would have helped if she’d asked me, you know.”

“She would never _ask_ , Potter. She’d rather—” I had to wait for the choking horror of it to release its grip on my throat. “She’d have rather died. And she did.”

I got up and went to the window, desperately trying to replace the most terrible image of her in my mind, the one I’d gladly erase with an _Obliviate_ if I could, with a happier one from my childhood. I heard Potter shifting behind me.

“I lost track of what happened to people after the war. I couldn’t stay there, you see,” he started to explain.

I cut him off. The last thing I wanted to hear today, of all days, were his bloody excuses.

“You keep saying that, but I still don’t understand what the hell you’re doing out here,” I growled. “You had everything—money, friends, the entire world at your feet—and you walked away to be some sad and lonely hermit. I tried for years to make a go of it there, even after I lost Mother. I worked _so hard_ and got spit on and sacked and ended up without a Knut to my name. I don’t pity you much.”

“You know fuck all about me, Malfoy.”

“Well, it’s not like you’d tell me anyway.”

I stomped away and shut myself in the bathroom again until I heard him go up to the loft. When I returned to the table, I couldn’t think of anything else to draw. The parchment vanished with an angry flick of my wand.

“It must be a difficult day for you,” Potter said later. “I didn’t mean to make it about me. And you’re right—whatever I’ve been through in the past few years doesn’t compare.”

I nodded to show that I accepted his apology.

“She didn’t deserve to suffer like that. The reparations were too harsh.”

“Mother was… not accustomed to poverty. It wore her down, made her lose hope, especially after we heard that Father had died in Azkaban,” I said, staring into one of the dark corners of the room. “I adjusted, being younger I suppose.”

“And you learnt to turn into a crow,” Potter said. “Was that part of adjusting?”

“That was part of _surviving_. She made me promise, before she died, that I’d find a way to do that.”

“I’m sure she’d be proud that you’ve done it.”

“Well, not alone,” I pointed out. “I’m grateful, of course, and I know Mother would be, too. But I’m hardly making my way in the world, am I?”

“I suppose not,” Potter murmured, looking pensive.

***

I woke one bright February morning burning with a fever and a sore throat. There was no hiding it from Potter in that small house. He brought me my tea and some Muggle pills that he claimed would reduce the fever.

“I don’t suppose you have any Pepper-Up?” I asked, trying to find a comfortable position in the armchair. My back and neck were beginning to ache and my head throbbed.

Potter shook his head. “I can’t remember the last time I had a cold.”

“I must have caught it when I went to the shops. Some germ-laden child probably sneezed in my direction in the queue. Disgusting.”

“Will you be all right if I go down to feed the Thestrals?”

“Yes, of course. It’s just a cold, honestly.”

It seemed like he was gone forever, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour. By the time he returned, I was beginning to feel truly miserable.

“You need to lie down. Let me help you move. Do you need to go to the loo first?”

I shook my head, too tired to speak. I didn’t understand that he was offering me his bed until he had helped me up the steep stairs and guided me towards it. It was even dimmer up here than downstairs, with only one window placed strangely at floor level in the gable end. With one arm still supporting me, he flipped back the covers.

“Can I help you put on some pyjamas?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. After sitting me down on the edge of the bed, he dug through a small chest of drawers and brought over a T-shirt and some pyjama bottoms, then helped me change. I lay down with a loud groan, causing Potter to look at me with concern.

“Comfortable,” I murmured, sprawling on the soft sheets and pushing my face into the pillow. “Almost forgot how nice they are, beds.”

With a hum of agreement, Potter pulled the duvet over me and told me to sleep. Either because he was able to command me in my weakened state or I was simply exhausted, I slipped into unconsciousness while Potter was still standing beside the bed.

It was dark when I awakened, sweaty and parched. I kicked off the duvet to let the cool air reach me. There were footsteps on the stairs a moment later. Potter arrived with a glass in his hand and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Water?”

He turned on the small lamp on the bedside table, then helped me sit up enough to drink.

“Now this,” Potter said when I had drunk half the glass. He uncorked a glass vial with a distinctive, minty aroma.

“Where’d you get that?”

“I went to Hogsmeade.”

“Oh. Thank you.” I held out a shaky hand for the vial and tipped it into my mouth in one go. “Better stand back. Gonna start steaming soon.”

Potter made a soft bark of laughter. When I was settled back on the pillows, he reached over slowly and brushed my damp fringe out of my eyes for me. The gentle gesture made me think of my mother nursing me through childhood illnesses. I closed my eyes and swallowed the lump in my swollen throat.

“Need anything else?”

I shook my head. I could already feel the potion starting to send a wave of coolness from my stomach to my limbs.

“Please don’t just sit there and stare at me. This is embarrassing enough,” I mumbled.

I felt the mattress shift as he stood.

“All right. Call me if you need anything.”

***

Potter slept downstairs that night. In the morning, he helped me use the bathroom and insisted that I stay in bed for the day. I didn’t argue. Even though my fever and other symptoms were gone, I felt as weak and wobbly as a newborn Mooncalf. And besides, getting to stretch out in a proper bed felt like a luxury.

“Why is the window like that?” I asked Potter.

I was propped up on pillows against the headboard, while he sat cross-legged near the foot of the bed. Playing cards were scattered on top of the duvet between us. Seeing me ill had finally worn down his resistance to teaching me a game.

“That was the door where they put the hay in when it was a barn. The cows lived under the loft in the winter, and the rest of it was filled with hay, right up to the rafters.”

I wrinkled my nose at the reminder of the house’s former life. “I hope you used an abundance of cleaning and sanitising charms. How do you know that about the building? The state of the meadow and the walls led me to believe this land hasn’t been grazed for a long time.”

“The farm down the stream stopped using it decades ago. It’s over a mile from the house,” Potter said, scooping up the cards to shuffle them. “I learnt about field barns when I bought it. And yes, of course I cleaned it. I had to replace a lot of the wooden parts anyway. Everything was rotten.”

I watched him shuffle the cards nimbly, then deal them out again. “Wouldn’t you rather live close to a village? You could walk to the shops instead of Apparating all the way across Yorkshire, and there’d be people to—”

“No, I don’t want to be near people, not even Muggles. That was the entire point of buying this place. And no one’s forcing me to do it. It was my choice.”

“ _Something_ made you do it,” I pressed.

“That’s really none of your business,” Potter snapped. He leaned back on his arms and looked up at the ceiling. “And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

I watched him for a few moments, taking in the wiry physique that he’d had as long as I’d known him. He’d always seemed resilient in spite of it, through all his school and wartime fights and misadventures. There’d been a spark of stubborn righteousness within him that had seemed to drive him on. Looking at him now, I worried that he couldn’t possibly go on like this, isolated as he was out here. It was a terribly dispiriting thought.

“I think I need to sleep for a little while,” I said.

Potter nodded, still looking mildly displeased. He gathered up the cards and set them on the bedside table in a neat stack. I caught his hand before he walked away from the bed. It was rough and warm in mine.

“Thank you for keeping me company. And for looking after me.”

“It’s no trouble,” he answered. He met my eyes steadily for a few long seconds before pulling his hand away and turning off the lamp.

After he left, I lay watching the winter light outside turn bluer, then fade away, and thought about the way Potter had just looked at me.

I must have been still fever-addled, because I got the impression that he almost seemed sorry for speaking so sharply.

***

I was well enough to get dressed and go downstairs the next day. From the armchair, I watched Potter cook and take care of what little housework needed doing. He seemed preoccupied with something, uncomfortable.

“Knut for your thoughts,” I said after he got up from the table a third time to look out the window.

“Oh. Well, I was thinking about what you said the other day, about not being able to make your way in the world. And I was wondering…”

“Yes?”

He spoke haltingly, like he was forcing out the words. “I was just wondering, would you leave England and start over somewhere else, if you could?”

“I’ve thought about it, of course, but I was never able to save any of my wages, much less enough to buy a Portkey and get by until I found work and a place to live.”

“I could give it to you. I have more than I’ll ever need, and some of it is from the Black vaults.”

My breath caught at the offer—a way to build a new life somewhere that had never heard the name Malfoy, among people who could see beyond the shameful mark on my arm. Merlin, with enough gold, I could finish my education, arrange an apprenticeship, maybe even make a name for myself.

“Would you take it?” Potter pressed.

I could hear his real question crouching within the quietness of his voice, and the difficulty he seemed to have making the offer. 

What he really was asking was, _would you leave me if you could?_

I tried to imagine what it would be like for him after I had gone, week after week, month after month, with nothing but Thestrals and ravens for company. I pictured him cooking meals that he would eat by himself in his silent, half-furnished house, and opening the next Christmas hamper alone.

The misery of it sent a shudder through my shoulders. I was certain that, whatever good things came to me if I left, I’d never be able to shake the shame of abandoning him.

“No, I wouldn’t take it. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable accepting that much gold from you, and there’d be a chance that I’d never be able to repay you. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me until something turns up for me in England.”

“Okay,” he said. “If you’re sure about it.”

When Potter went out to pick up the meat for the Thestrals that afternoon, I couldn’t help thinking about what I might have just given up. An awareness tickled the back of my mind, whispering that it wasn’t only sympathy that kept me here with Potter. Something bound me to him in a way I could imagine with no other living person. It was more than our long acquaintance and our shared experiences at a formative age. It was more than the aching loneliness I’d felt since Mother died or the vulnerability of being alone in the world.

Before I dozed off in the armchair, I tried to make a vow to myself that I’d go forwards with my eyes open where Potter was concerned. I’d already sensed the magnitude of his power and the otherworldliness cloaking him. It would be foolish to forget that, no matter how mundane he appeared to my human eyes and the faint glimpses of vulnerability that I’d seen in him.

Despite the nap, it wasn’t long after dinner that I became sleepy again.

“I’m fine to sleep in my crow form tonight,” I told Potter.

“You’re still getting better. Do you want me to move those and try to Transfigure something into a bed for you?” Potter asked, gesturing at the piles of boxes along the wall.

“No, I know from experience that it’s hard to make something comfortable. I honestly don’t mind sleeping in my Animagus form.”

“You should sleep upstairs again,” he insisted.

“You can’t have been comfortable sleeping in this chair,” I said, then raised my eyebrows. “Unless you’re an Animagus, too, and haven’t told me. Let me guess, you’re a tabby like old McGonagall, and you spent the last two nights curled up on the cushion.”

Potter rolled his eyes. “I’m not an Animagus. I made do with a few charms, and I don’t mind doing it again.”

“It’s your bed.”

“It’s going to be freezing down here when the range cools down. Unlike you, I can cast Warming Charms on myself that last all night.”

“I have feathers, _unlike you_ , so I won’t get cold.”

“Malfoy,” he said, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbing his eyes. “Just take the goddamn bed.”

I gave in, less because I wanted the bed that badly (though it was nice), and more because I was simply too damn exhausted to argue with him anymore.

“Fine.” I rose from the chair to go upstairs, then was halted by a sudden thought halfway to the stairs. “We’d both fit, you know. It’s a double bed.”

Potter stared at me and didn’t answer, so I went upstairs and got ready for bed. I put on a clean pair of pyjamas (the line between Potter’s clothing and my own was rather blurred at this point, he’d shared so much of it) and slipped into the fresh sheets that he’d put on the bed that morning.

I had intended to stay awake until he decided to come upstairs or settle into the armchair for the night, but I was too tired to keep my eyes open. Just in case he chose to sleep here, I wriggled over to one side of the bed.

When I woke in the morning, it was with a view of Potter’s back as he slipped out from beneath the covers. I quickly closed my eyes and pretended to sleep until he went downstairs.

I had lain beside him all night without knowing it.

The next evening, when he told me that I should keep sharing the bed with him, just through the coldest months, I didn’t protest at all.

***

I recovered from my cold quickly and resumed my daily walks, as the weather allowed. On the days when the sky cleared, the air was sharp and cold, and I relished transforming so that I could fly high enough to see for miles. I steered clear of the Thestrals’ grove in that form, just to be safe, but I found a waterfall further up the stream, near the edge of Potter’s land. There was a small pool below it, surrounded by steep walls of dark stone that sheltered it from the wind. It became one of my favourite places to spend time.

The weather grew milder as February drew to a close. The ice along the banks of the stream thawed and my boots sank into the soft ground when I climbed the hill behind the house. Potter still fed the two pregnant mares, but the other Thestrals began to hunt again now that their prey was emerging from their winter shelters.

One afternoon when I was in the city, meandering around to get my fill of sights and sounds that weren’t moorland, Thestrals, or Potter, I watched several people walking dogs while they enjoyed the warmer temperatures—tiny dogs with tartan coats, large dogs panting with happiness, and every size in between. Normally, I didn’t pay much attention to the people around me, but I noticed that the bland expressions they usually wore on the city pavements softened into something more cheerful and open when they had their dogs with them.

I couldn’t help but compare it to the guarded and morose look that often resided on Potter’s face.

“Have you thought about getting a dog?” I asked him while we were cooking dinner that night.

“No, I hadn’t, really. I do like dogs.”

“Maybe not one of those enormous, slobbery beasts like Hagrid had. It might be nice for you to have some companionship besides me and the Thestrals.”

“I’d have to train it not to bother them,” he said thoughtfully, “but you’re right. It might be nice.”

I came over to the range where he was frying sausages. Our shoulders brushed as I gave the large pot of pasta on the hob a stir. He didn’t flinch away anymore when I got this close, but I could tell he was very aware of my proximity by the way he tensed up. I didn’t think he was averse to being touched as much as he was unaccustomed to it.

I wasn’t averse to it, myself. Sometimes I longed for my mother’s hand on my hand, her cheek against my cheek, so much that it was almost unbearable. Part of me wanted to wrap my arm around Potter’s waist while we cooked or stood side by side watching the Thestrals. Sometimes I thought about coming up behind him when he was looking out the window and resting my chin on his shoulder. Or reaching over to drape my arm across him when he tossed and turned within our shared warmth beneath the duvet.

I always resisted, telling myself that I might just be going a little barmy from the isolation.

The subject of a dog didn’t come up again, and when Potter told me two weeks later that he was going to visit the Thestral herds in the Forbidden Forest, it didn’t occur to me that he might return with a wriggling, half-grown mutt in his arms.

“Potter,” I said, trying to be stern, “you really do rush headlong into decisions, don’t you?”

He set the dog down on the floor. It was a lanky, black thing with a plumy tail and ears that couldn’t make up their mind if they wanted to fold down or perk up. A herding dog of some kind, I guessed. It began to sniff around the room.

“I overheard a couple of people in the butcher shop in Hogsmeade say she’s been wandering around the high street for a few weeks now. She needed a home,” Potter said.

“She could be a lost dog. You may have stolen someone’s dog.”

“No collar, and someone would have come looking for her or asked around if she had an owner.” Potter knelt down and the dog went right to him, wagging and trying to climb into his lap. “She’s not going to get big and drooly, and I can tell she’s really smart.”

“She’s going to look like the Grim when she gets bigger. You realise that, don’t you? You’ve brought an omen of death into your home.”

“Don’t say that!” he said with surprising vehemence.

He looked so taken with the dog that there was nothing left for me to do but throw up my hands and give in.

“It’s your house. You don’t need my approval. But I’m not going to clean up after her,” I said.

“Of course not. I’ll do that, and figure out how to train her.”

“Well, I suppose I don’t have any objections, then,” I sighed. “And it _was_ my idea in the first place.”

“It was,” Potter said, smiling at the dog. Then he sobered and cleared his throat. “Um, I’ll need you to buy some things for her today, if you wouldn’t mind. Food and some things to wash and groom her. And a bed. I’m not sure what else, to be honest.”

“Fine. Make a list and I’ll go.” I stepped closer and held out my hand for the dog, and she immediately turned her intelligent eyes my way. A sudden thought occurred to me. “Potter, you’re sure she isn’t another Animagus, aren’t you?”

He tousled her ears. “She isn’t, I checked. Like I said, just an ordinary dog. And now she’s ours.”

_Ours._

I tried to pretend I hadn’t heard it, but my mind stayed caught on that word like a sleeve caught on a bramble thorn.

All I could do was watch Potter, smiling at another lost and lonely creature that he had brought home, feeling helpless and hopeful in equal measure.


	3. Spring

Potter named the dog Zoë. His first impression was correct—she was a clever little thing, and she learnt to behave herself quickly. She even managed the steep stairs to the loft, where Potter insisted she have a second bed. I complained about the cold nose waking me in the morning, but I couldn’t help but grow fond of her. And Potter was all smiles when she was with him, so I would have tolerated a much worse-behaved animal, just to see that.

We took Zoë out on a lead until Potter was confident that she wouldn’t bother the Thestrals. He seemed to think she might try to nip at their legs as if they were sheep—and get kicked for her trouble. He taught her to sit a short distance from the herd while he tended to them and checked the pregnant mares, who were due to foal any day.

Potter walked down to the stream morning and night to keep watch for the telltale signs. I was eager to see the births, though I hoped it wouldn’t mean getting dragged out of bed in the night.

The moment came in the morning, thankfully. Potter popped back to the house to let me know that the first foal would be born in the next half an hour or so. He shut Zoë inside and found a small satchel in the lean-to while he waited for me to put on my coat and boots.

“A few medical supplies, just in case,” he explained when I inquired.

“Where did you learn how to tend them?”

“I helped Hagrid out from time to time the first year after the war, before he moved to France with Madame Maxime. I was spending a lot of time in the Forbidden Forest—”

“Doing what?” I asked, laughing. “Making friends with the Acromantulas?”

“I was looking for something.” Potter’s expression closed off as soon as he realised he’d slipped. “Anyway, I was with the Thestrals a lot, and Hagrid was kind enough to let me make myself useful. I’m glad he did. He helped me get permission to bring a herd here by vouching for my ability to care for them.”

“Permission from the Ministry?” I asked. Potter was almost completely cut off from the magical world, aside from his brief trips to Hogsmeade under a Glamour. It was difficult to imagine him meeting with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures and jumping through whatever bureaucratic hoops were necessary to get the approval.

“I had help getting it done, er, _discreetly_. And without having to go there in person,” he said. After a dozen more steps down the hill towards the stream, he added, “I told Kingsley I didn’t plan to accept an Order of Merlin, but if the Ministry wanted to do something for me, this was it.”

I huffed in disbelief. “You turned down the most prestigious award in magical Britain for a herd of Thestrals? Only you, Potter.”

He shrugged, then quickened his steps as we walked along the swift-running stream to the grove. The banks were already becoming lush with spring grasses, and the meadow would soon be in bloom. It was an overcast day, but bright, so at least we wouldn’t be waiting around in the rain.

One of the mares had separated herself from the rest of the herd a short distance away, near a small cluster of saplings. She was restless, turning her head to look at her flanks and lifting her legs against her round belly. Potter and I found a place to stand a few yards away.

“Her waters broke just before I came back to the house. It shouldn’t be long now. You’ll see the front hooves come out first,” Potter began to tell me, but I cut him off.

“I’m not sure I need to know the details,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “I’m just here as an observer. Things don’t often go wrong, do they?”

“No, not often. Sometimes the mare needs a bit of healing afterwards, but unless the foal is facing the wrong way, there shouldn’t be a problem. This isn’t her first time.”

We watched the mare pace and strain, then clumsily lower herself to stretch out on her side. The rest of the herd seemed to be waiting, too, though none of them approached the mare. Before very long, Potter drew a sharp breath and took a step closer.

“There, do you see? Here it comes,” he said, almost brimming with anticipation. “We’ll see the nose next.”

I’d been thinking more of the end result of the birth rather than the process of it when I had agreed to watch. From that point on, Potter was so engrossed in watching her progress that he didn’t notice that I was looking at the trees beyond the mare. A few squeamish glances told me the foal was gradually emerging. Potter murmured to me that the hardest part was almost over, and it would come very quickly now.

Just moments after he said it, he darted forward as the foal slid out onto the ground. He made sure its airways were clear and gently pressed his hands over its sides, beneath the wet folds of its tiny wings. He grinned over at me.

“It seems healthy.” Potter leaned closer to look at the foal. “A filly! You can come a bit closer, if you like. I’m going to move her over so her mum can see her and clean her up a bit.”

After gently lifting the tiny creature and placing her near the mare’s head, he beckoned me over.

“She’s so small,” I said, marvelling at the spindly legs folded beneath her fragile body. Every lick by her mother almost tipped her onto her side. Her eyes were a milky blue, and she already had the distinctive beak-like curve over her mouth.

“No, she’s actually a good-sized foal. She’ll try to stand up in a little while, and you’ll see how tall she is. I’m going to check the mare now. You might want to stand back.”

I didn’t hesitate to comply, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the little filly, who was flicking her ears now and lifting her head. Potter went behind the mare and made some concerned sounds while he examined her. He opened his satchel and took out a few vials and bottles.

“Fuck. I’m going to need more Essence of Dittany,” he said, without looking up. “Could you go to Hogsmeade for me? I don’t want to leave them just yet.”

I looked at him incredulously for a moment. “Potter, I can’t just walk into Hogsmeade and stroll into a shop. People remember my face, and they don’t want my custom, believe me.”

Potter glanced over his shoulder with a frown, then stood and came over to me.

“I’ll cast a Glamour on you. No one will recognise you, I promise. The Galleons are in that jar on top of the chest of drawers upstairs.”

He lifted a hand towards my face and I stumbled back with a sound of disgust.

“Clean your hand first, you cretin!” I told him.

“I did,” he said, holding it out.

I came to stand back in front of him. I’d caught him performing wandless magic a few times already, so I wasn’t surprised that he’d managed a simple Cleaning Charm. However, it did shock me when he raised his hand to my face and I felt his magic brushing over my skin like a hot breeze.

“Stay still,” he said softly.

I closed my eyes and barely breathed as I felt him run a fingertip down the bridge of my nose, run a thumb over each of my cheekbones, and slide his fingers into my hair at my temple.

“There. That should do. Please hurry, okay? Get a few bottles, so I’ll be sure to have enough for the other mare.”

He was still standing very close when I opened my eyes. I managed to nod, swaying slightly from the physical and magical touch. He clapped me on the shoulder before turning back to the mare.

I hurried back up the hill to the house. Zoë wriggled around my legs when I came inside. I gently pushed her away to go upstairs for the gold. On my way back down, I paused, curious to know what I looked like. There was no mirror in the bathroom—Potter, I speculated, might be able see the strange effect his magic had wrought on his appearance (as I could as a crow) and didn’t like it. I hastily pulled a saucepan from the cupboard and cast a reflection spell on the bottom.

He’d made my hair darker and the angles of my face softer. It wasn’t a dramatic change, but it was enough to make me unrecognisable.

And Potter had done it with a few touches of his hand.

_Bloody hell._

***

After months of dreariness and cold, the arrival of spring was almost exhilarating. Between the new foals prancing after their mothers by the stream, Zoë’s constant canine joyfulness, and the moorland bursting into life, I was reminded every day that something will come along to lift the lowest spirits, if you can hold on long enough.

Rather than retreading the same circuits that I had worn into the grass with my walks, I attempted some new ways to pass the days. I tucked a little sketchbook and a pencil into my pocket and produced a few mediocre sketches of the house and the foals. During one of my shopping excursions I found a book about wildflowers and started identifying the early bloomers in the meadow: bird’s-eye primrose, meadow buttercup, pignut.

I also tried my hand at repairing the broken drystone walls. It was more difficult than it appeared. Potter strolled by one afternoon with Zoë and watched me struggle with finding the proper arrangement of the stones.

“Why don’t you just use Sticking Charms?” he asked, earning himself a glare.

“Did you use Sticking Charms for the house, hmm? Did you just slap slates onto the roof with a few waggles of your fingers? Is the loft held up with Levitating Charms?”

Potter narrowed his eyes. “I used magic for some of it, yes. I can’t imagine _you_ objecting to that. Are you worried about the house falling down on your head?”

“I’m just trying to get this section to blend in with the rest of the wall. If I used magic as a shortcut, I could stack the stones any which way, but doing it by hand will almost guarantee the correct result. It wouldn’t stay up otherwise.”

“Oh, I see,” he said, eyes widening with understanding. “I guess I wasn’t worried about keeping things as they were, since I had to change so much to convert it to a house.”

I used my wand to levitate a stone into place, then my hand to settle it in the right position. “And no, I’m not worried about the magic in the house. Even if the entire building is held up that way, I know by now that you’ve enough power in your little finger to make sure the spells don’t fail suddenly.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Potter said tightly.

“Of course I’ve _noticed_ , Potter,” I replied, turning on the balls of my feet to look up at him, archly. “Not just the wandless magic, which is impressive in its own right. When I’m in my crow form near you, it’s almost like standing under a waterfall of magic.”

Potter looked stricken. This was apparently a secret that he thought he’d kept from me.

“It’s not… I’m not going to—”

“I _know_. Do you think I’d stay here if it frightened me? I’m bloody curious about it, though, I’ll admit. You certainly didn’t have that kind of power as a child. Things would have been quite different, if you had.”

Potter shook his head, still wide-eyed. “No, I didn’t have it then. And I’m not going to explain it to you if you ask.”

I turned back to the wall, frustrated. “It doesn’t seem like I’ll ever earn the right to ask, does it?”

Instead of an answer, I heard the sound of his steps retreating across the meadow, and I let the stone in my hand fall onto the soft soil at my feet. It was true that he didn’t owe me any explanations. Being denied them when I had all but asked directly stung a bit, though.

That night, he woke me by throwing off the duvet suddenly and sitting on the edge of the bed. His laboured breaths filled the quiet room. I sat up and moved close enough to lay my hand on his back.

“Just a dream,” I murmured, pressing my thumb into the muscle under his shoulder blade.

He slumped forward a bit as he calmed down. To compensate for the extra distance and keep rubbing his back, I slid closer. The heat of him and the faint smell of sweat pressed at my senses in the darkness.

“Come and lie back down,” I urged.

Instead of complying, he stood up and went to crouch in front of the low window in the gable end of the room. I heard the thump of Zoë’s wagging tail, then the click of her toenails on the wooden floor as she trotted over to Potter.

“No matter how much I try not to dwell on the past, I still have dreams about it—nightmares, sometimes.”

“I’m sorry. I have them, too.”

“The worst part is, it’s not always the terrible memories that are the hardest. Sometimes I worry I won’t be able to bear it anymore, if I can’t stop thinking about all the things I’ve had to leave behind,” Potter said hoarsely. “I almost wish… I could forget the happy times, too. I wake up from dreaming about them, and it’s like losing everything all over again.”

“I know. I feel that way when I dream of Mother. But I’d never want to forget her. My memories are all I have left of her. Everything else is gone. But your friends are still out there, you know. You may hardly see them, but they must still care about you.”

I watched his faint silhouette against the window while I waited for him to reply. At last, Potter rose to his feet and ordered Zoë back to her bed. 

“I know. I suppose I should be thankful for that. I’m glad you agreed to stay. Even though I’m kind of a freak now,” he added with a bitter laugh. “It’s made everything so much better, having someone here with me.”

I was breathless with surprise for a few beats. He’d never told me he was happy to have me here with him before, nor had he ever spoken about himself in such a disparaging way.

“You’re not a freak. Get back in here and try to sleep.”

I moved back to make room for him, but not all the way over to the far side of the bed. When he climbed in, I wrapped my arm around his shoulders and pulled him down against my side.

For a moment, I thought he might turn away, but then he settled his head on my shoulder and arranged his arms and legs so that he was comfortable. He breathed softly against my chest, where my heartbeat must have been frantically drumming my sudden awareness of the way his body was pressed against mine. It was too late to undo my impulsive gesture now. I willed my own muscles to relax.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“You’re welcome.”

To help me fall asleep, I tried my usual trick of envisioning the constellations as they would appear above me. Tonight, imagining the vast dome of the sky sent a soft pang of wonder through me. Six months ago when I used this technique, I’d felt so small and alone in the world, with no one to care for me and no place to settle, like a stray bit of parchment in the wind.

Now I had Harry Potter curled against me, solid and warm.

I had someone who needed me again.

***

“Have you ever thought about becoming an Animagus?”

Potter shrugged. We were sitting side by side on the front doorstep, watching a few of the Thestrals wheeling overhead in the evening sky, and I felt the movement of his shoulder against mine rather than saw it.

“Yeah, ever since I was about thirteen and found out that my dad was an Animagus. And Sirius, too. I’ve just never bothered to try.”

“What do you think you’d be? A stag, like your Patronus? You could graze in the meadow for your lunches.”

He chuckled softly. “I could be whatever I wanted, I think.”

“That’s not how it works, Potter. You don’t get to pick.”

“I _know_. I mean I could probably Transfigure myself into anything I wanted.”

I was thunderstruck for a moment. “What the _fuck_? That’s a lot bloody harder than an Animagus transformation. Only Merlin and a handful of other powerful witches and wizards were known to do it without losing their human consciousness. Even if you achieved the transformation, you would never be able to change yourself back if your mind was thinking like the animal’s. In that minute I spent as a ferret, there was no memory at all of being human, just the overwhelming urge to run away and hide. It was fucking terrifying. It would be mad to try it, no matter how bloody powerful you are.”

Potter looked away from me; I sensed that he was annoyed that I hadn’t believed him. I calmed myself with a deep breath, hoping to salvage this conversation before he went off in a huff again, as he had when I was repairing the wall.

“All right, if you _could_ choose your Animagus form, what would you wish to be?” I asked, bumping our shoulders together.

“I think I might like to be some kind of bird,” he said quietly. “I’ve always loved flying on a broom. It must be fun to glide around up there.”

“Well, crows don’t glide as much as some birds, but yes, it is rather wonderful to be agile in the air in a way that you can’t on a broom. And there’s something deeply satisfying about it. It must be the bird instincts that creep in when I’m in that form.”

“Was it hard to learn?”

“To become an Animagus?”

“No, to fly. Could you do it straight away once you could transform?”

“Almost. I learnt like a young bird does, by hopping and getting a bit of lift from flapping my wings, then by jumping down from higher and higher places. After that, it was just a matter of finding out what kinds of things I could do, as far as turning and diving. I used to go to the Muggle parks in the city at night to practice.”

I was happy to see that I had Potter’s full attention again.

“But you didn’t want to live there? As a crow?”

I shook my head. “I wanted to be someplace I could use magic without violating the Statute, if I was in serious danger and had to change back.”

“Like being chased by a bunch of angry rooks?” Potter asked pointedly.

“I thought I could outfly them! I was trying to save it as a last resort, until you came along and _commanded_ me to change back,” I grumbled.

His face fell. “Can I really do that?”

“Couldn’t you tell? Yes, it’s impossible for me to disobey. I think you can understand why I’d rather you didn’t do that.”

I turned my left forearm in my lap so that the inside faced upward.

“Yeah, okay,” he breathed. “I won’t. I didn’t know it was like that for you, since you’re not really an animal. I would never want to… control you in that way.”

“I should hope not.”

Seeing him look distressed, I transformed and hopped off the doorstep to stand in front of him. I didn’t often do this so close to him, but every time I did, it helped me grow more accustomed to being near him in this form. I picked up a small stone and tossed it at his feet.

“Godric, you’re a prat as a bird, too. Do you like to collect shiny things? Should I scatter some Knuts around the meadow for you to find?”

He gave a startled shout when I flapped once to hop up onto his knee. Instead of feeling his magic more strongly, I almost felt surrounded by it, like a ship in the eye of a hurricane. I tried croaking out a few words, something I hadn’t done before. Very carefully, he reached out an index finger and touched the top of my head. I responded by catching the cuff of his sleeve in my beak.

“Oi, stop that!”

I released him immediately, of course, and then felt a surge of irritation. Without thinking of where I was positioned, I changed back and knocked Potter onto his back with my weight.

“You just said you wouldn’t do that!” I said.

He struggled back up, propping himself with his hands behind him. “I didn’t mean to. It just came out.”

I felt my cheeks burning when I realised that I was straddling his thighs, yet I didn’t move.

“Fine. Please try not to do it again. And don’t try to _pet me_ , for pity’s sake. You’ve a dog if you want to do that.”

“She has a much sweeter disposition than you, anyway,” Potter said. He reached up, quick as a Seeker, to ruffle my hair, which had grown down to my shoulders.

I started to lean away, but had to grab onto his shoulders to keep from falling off his lap.

“Now who’s being a prat?”

He looked up at me, his face softening into a thoughtful expression.

“Did you ever think we’d get along so well?”

“What, when you brought me here, or before that?”

“Ever, I guess,” he said, his green eyes both questioning and fixated as a cat’s on a bird. He set first one hand, then the other on my waist.

I felt my pulse quicken.

“No, I don’t think it ever occurred to me that we could.”

My hands were still on his shoulders, so there was no way for him to stop me from taking a bit of his hair between my fingers and giving it a sharp pull. I leaped up before he could tighten his grip on me.

“It looks like the Thestrals are down for the night,” I said, “so it’s safe for me to have my turn.” I turned away with a jaunty wave and transformed again.

Frowning, he watched me fly off.

***

On a warm day in late May while we were visiting the Thestrals, Potter suggested going to the waterfall. I assumed he meant walking there through the woods, but after I’d agreed, he surprised me by pulling off his boots and socks, then his jeans.

“What? I’m hot. I’m going to wade upstream. You can fly up there, if you want to.”

I watched him walk carefully into the running water, wearing only his boxers and a loose T-shirt. After wobbling across the rougher rocks at the edge, he was able to step more comfortably in the centre. His legs were surprisingly well-muscled, likely from walking the hills here. When he looked over his shoulder, I quickly turned my eyes away.

Too late. He’d caught me looking.

He began striding against the flow of the water. I did as he suggested and transformed. At the edge of the small pool at the bottom of the waterfall, I found a stone ledge large enough to fit my human form and changed back. By the time Potter arrived, I was sitting with my bare feet in the water, kicking idly.

“You’re daft! It’s bloody cold,” I called to him.

“It’s not so bad once you get used to it,” he said. When he got close enough, he splashed me. “See? Feels nice! You should come in.”

He waded towards me with a gleam in his eye. I scrambled to my feet, prepared to take advantage of my Animagus skills to escape if I needed to.

“Don’t you dare try to grab me,” I warned him.

His smile widened. “I don’t need to.”

With a flick of his hand, he pulled me into the water. It wasn’t deep, but I fell sideways and went under briefly before I got my footing. I came up coughing and furious. I launched myself at him, trying to catch him around the waist to pull him down.

We grappled for a few minutes on the loose pebbles of the stream bed, shouting and splashing. His hands gripped my hips, and my hands slipped on his wet arms as I tried to free myself. Our thighs brushed together as we tried to hook our ankles around the other’s calves. Eventually, we both gave up.

“I could have hit my head on a rock, you know,” I said while we were catching our breath. “And it’s not fair that you can just fling me around like that with your magic.”

“You’re fine.” He took a quick step closer to catch me by the bicep when I almost lost my balance again. “I was just having fun. I wouldn’t let you get hurt.”

His voice had turned serious, and he was studying me intently. I shivered beneath his gaze. He must have thought I was cold, because the parts of me out of the water were suddenly dry and warm.

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, _now_ you’ve decided to take good care of me?”

He hesitated for a moment, then moved his hand up to shoulder, then to the back of my neck. My breath caught in my throat as his cool, wet fingers slid over my nape.

“Yes,” he said, just loud enough to be heard over the rushing water behind us. “If you’ll let me. I thought maybe we could…”

“Could what?”

I so badly wanted to tilt forwards and press my lips to his. His hair hung in damp tendrils around his face; I could almost imagine how it would feel tangled in my hand as I held his mouth against mine.

I let him pull me against him with a hand on my lower back. I could feel him half-hard against my thigh, and a bolt of heat ran through my abdomen in response.

“We could help each other out. I’ve seen you looking. At _me_ ,” he added, significantly. “And if we both wanted to, why not?”

I drew back. My stomach went as cold as if I’d drunk ice water. “Help each other out,” I repeated, “since already I live with you and we might both be... interested?”

Potter shrugged. “Yeah. And we like each other, I think. We get along.”

“Right. I see.”

I turned and waded back to the ledge where I’d been sitting and hauled myself back atop it to pull my boots over my wet feet. Something seemed to be crumbling inside my chest.

“Mal—Draco.”

“I don’t think it would be a good idea. In fact, I think it would be a terrible idea. I’ll see you back at the house.”

With my back to him, I transformed and flew out of the trees. Instead of landing at the house, I pushed on to the top of the hill behind it, seething and vaguely humiliated that Potter had discovered the attraction that I was only just beginning to notice myself.

Exhausted after circling for some time, I resumed my human form to lay on my back with an arm flung over my eyes. I couldn’t deny that I wanted Potter, but I had no intention of agreeing to sex that was offered like a fucking _amenity_ that came with sharing his house. 

I knew he wasn’t trying to take advantage of me or coerce me into repaying him for his kindness—Potter simply didn’t have it in him to do that to anyone, even me. Yet the offer still burned like a Stinging Hex. As I lay in the prickling grass, the reason why began to present itself in my mind, like a new leaf unfurling. 

_You want something more from him, you idiot,_ I scolded myself. _He doesn’t want that with you, and maybe not with anyone else, either._

I turned over to curl on my side. Wasn’t it degrading enough that he could bend my will to his when I was a crow and overpower me with his magic, even playfully? I had no intention of letting him play with my emotions, too.

I stayed on the moor until the sun was low over the horizon and the air was cooling. I’d have to face him eventually, I reckoned. Sore from lying on the ground, I got to my feet and plodded back to the house.

As soon as I came through the door, he scrambled up from the floor, where he’d been stroking Zoë’s silky ears. 

“I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I didn’t mean to, er, offend you by making it sound that way.”

“What way? Like you were offering some kind of business arrangement?” I asked. I walked past him towards the kitchen to get a glass of water; lying in the sun had left me parched.

“I guess I didn’t think it through. It was just kind of a sudden impulse. Forget it.”

Wincing, I kept my back to him and filled my glass with an _Aguamenti_ , followed by a light Cooling Charm. I’d already known that his interest in me had seemed tepid when we were by the waterfall. There was no reason to feel as disappointed as I did now, hearing him ask me to _forget it_. 

“I thought it seemed a bit sudden,” I said lightly. “And, as I said, it wouldn’t be a good idea, given that this is a pretty fucked-up situation we’re in.”

“What do you mean? I thought you… I thought we both liked living here together,” he said. His voice shook slightly, like an autumn leaf clinging to a tree. I’d heard the same uncertainty lurking in it when he had offered me his gold to leave England.

I turned back to face him. “It’s not that I don’t like it, or that I’m unhappy here. But _I_ have nowhere else to go, and _you_ have no one else to keep you company. Can you honestly say we’d be having this conversation if you led a normal life, with a job and your friends to hang around with? We only ended up here through some string of terrible circumstances.”

“That doesn’t matter!” Potter insisted.

“You’re right. But it does matter that _neither of us can leave_. Not easily, at any rate.”

His shoulders slumped slightly. I took long sips of water to calm myself and watched the last pool of afternoon light on the wooden floor shrink as the sun went behind the hill. At last, Potter spoke.

“You can go any time. I told you, I can give you enough gold to start over somewhere. Just… say you want to leave, and I’ll help you.” He stepped closer and touched the back of left hand. “I give you my word, Draco.”

I felt the magic he infused into the words. It wasn’t as strong as an Unbreakable Vow, but his magic would certainly remind him, painfully, if he didn’t keep his promise.

“All right. Thank you. Please don’t… Whatever you were proposing by the waterfall, I don’t want it to be for the wrong reasons—because you think it would, I don’t know, scratch an itch for both of us. Or because we’re each other’s only option. We shouldn’t do anything rash that would hurt both of us if it went tits up and I felt like I couldn’t stay.”

Sighing, he watched me set my glass in the sink. “No, I don’t want that either. I’m sorry. I think I’ve fucked this up, haven’t I?”

“You didn’t. It’s all right.”

That night, Potter merely nodded with weary acceptance when I told him I’d rather sleep downstairs again. He probably thought I was punishing him for his impulsive offer earlier.

In truth, I didn’t want to be tempted, now that I knew that if I reached for him beneath the covers, he’d meet me halfway.

***

The days kept lengthening as summer approached. The Thestral foals made their first journey up to the open moorland. Zoë ran off after a hare one day and bounded back to Potter with her coat adorned with thistles. The stream shrank and the heather prepared to bloom.

My twenty-second birthday came and went. I hadn’t done anything to mark it since losing Mother. My birthday had been one of the few times when she’d shown the more sentimental side of herself. She’d always made sure to put her love for me into affectionate words—via letter, once I was at Hogwarts—that made me squirm with discomfort at the time, but that I treasured above everything now.

That hadn’t changed after the war ended. On my eighteenth birthday, just after the Wizengamot had decided that we should go free (but have every last Sickle stripped from our vaults), she’d scraped together enough money for a small cake. We’d eaten it in the room we were renting in Knockturn Alley while she had reminisced about my childhood celebrations.

On my nineteenth birthday, she could only hold my hand, too consumed by unhappiness to say much, but I’d felt her love as strongly as ever.

A birthday didn’t feel worth acknowledging if I couldn’t share it with someone who loved me.

Potter liked me, in his alternately aloof and intense way, but I didn’t believe he loved me.

And with every day I spent with him, I grew more worried that it wouldn’t be enough.


	4. Summer

A clap of thunder, followed by Zoë’s fearful whines, woke me early one morning. I could see that the sky outside was brightening, despite the storm. Resigned to being awake, I hopped to the floor to transform and use the loo. When I returned to the kitchen to put the kettle on the hob, I heard Potter trying to coax the dog up onto the bed.

“If you let her up once, she’s never going to stop,” I called towards the ceiling. “I’ve seen what she gets into when she’s outside and you do _not_ want it on the blankets.”

“She’s scared,” Potter called back.

“Then get under the bed with her.”

“Heartless,” he declared, but I heard the creak of the floorboards as he slid out of bed onto the floor.

He came downstairs—alone—soon after. I handed him a mug of tea after he’d sat down with a sigh in his armchair. I wondered if he’d slept poorly, and then I felt a twinge of guilt for hoping that he’d slept better with me beside him.

“It’s the last day of June. It’s been three years today since I came here.”

“Since you moved in?”

“No, since I signed off on all the paperwork and the property was mine. I bought a tent that same day and lived in it until the house was ready. Merlin, I wanted to be here so badly.”

“Where were you living before that?” I asked. It wasn’t often that Potter volunteered information like this. “Were you staying with someone?”

“No. I lived in a few different places. It was hard to find somewhere I was, er, comfortable. I even asked Professor McGonagall if I could build a cabin in the Forbidden Forest, but she said it wouldn’t be safe for me.”

He made a scornful laugh into his mug and took a sip of tea. He was still in his pyjamas, rumpled and sleepy. I longed to comb my fingers through his messy hair.

“And your friends? Where were they all that time?”

He shook his head. “We had a lot of rows. They thought I’d…”

“What?”

“Lost the plot, I guess. Maybe I did a bit, for a while.”

Lightning flashed again outside, but the thunder took its time arriving. The storm was rolling away to the west.

“You seem all right to me now. Aside from your insistence on eating those horrid noodles from paper cups and your strange taste in companions.” I leant forwards in my chair to frown at him with mock seriousness. “Is it the colour black? The Thestrals? The ravens? Even your goddamn dog is black, Potter.”

He shook his head, smiling faintly.

“It’s not the colour,” he said. “I would have brought Zoë home even if she’d been purple.”

“Merlin forbid.” I waited a moment, then attempted to turn the conversation back to him. “You did all the work on the house yourself, didn’t you? And the wards?”

“Of course. The wards were the first thing I did. Who else would have done it? No one else has ever set foot inside the wards until I brought you here.”

“Oh,” I said, both moved that he’d allowed me here and faintly appalled that he’d been here without one visitor for three years. “I thought you didn’t bring Granger and Weasley to the house at Christmas because I was here.”

“No, it wasn’t that. This is my refuge.” He reached over and gave my wrist a quick squeeze where it rested on the arm of the chair. “I know you think it must be awful for me to live way out here, but it’s not. This is the only place where I feel safe. The last thing I want is to be around people, even the ones who meant everything to me.”

We were getting closer to the heart of the matter, the reason why Potter had isolated himself.

“And yet you brought me here, when I should have been the last person you’d ever want to intrude on your refuge. I doubt you had one pleasant memory of me when you found me in the Forbidden Forest.”

“The Life-Debt to your mother was weighing on me, I told you. I don’t know if it was seeing you or being so close to the place where I incurred that debt, but I couldn’t ignore it.” Potter’s eyes flickered over my face. “And I hadn’t thought about you in a long time, when I probably should have.”

I snorted. “I hadn’t realised that I was so forgettable. I rather thought we featured strongly in each other’s adolescent years.”

“Yes, we did. But you weren’t…”

“Important?” I finished for him, keeping up the teasing tone, but flinching inwardly.

“No, you were very important,” he said solemnly, “especially at the end. But you weren’t something that I lost. You weren’t something that was painful to remember.”

“Ah.”

“No need to sound so disappointed. I doubt you missed me.”

“I was rather preoccupied with other things,” I murmured.

“I know.”

Our gazes remained locked until Zoë let out a short howl when lightning lit up the room again. I heard her scurry across the floor of the loft and down the stairs. She went straight to Potter and put her head in his lap.

“Oh, you’re fine,” I told her, irritated that our conversation had been interrupted.

“Heartless,” Potter repeated.

I listened to him murmur soothing words to Zoë, and I wished very much that I was, in fact, heartless.

***

Despite the careful distance we’d maintained since the day at the waterfall, Potter and I could still enjoy each other’s company. He relaxed enough to laugh with me—and sometimes at me, when he thought I was being particular or fussy—and rushed home to summon me outside when there was something interesting to see. 

My general happiness began to be of greater concern to him, too, and he went out of his way to do small things for me that he hadn’t before. He surprised me with a second armchair that he’d found in some village antique shop, and merely rolled his eyes when I asked him to charm the upholstery a different colour. When he seemed about to retreat to the loft or head outside alone, I saw him stop himself and offer to play cards or ask me to show him my most recent sketches instead.

His rash suggestion by the waterfall and my harsh refusal must have made him worry that he’d blunder again and scare me off. While I appreciated his attention, the intensity of it and our limited options for amusement here made me feel restless again, even more than I had in the winter.

“Let’s go somewhere today. There’s got to be a place besides the Forbidden Forest where there’ll be no one around.”

“Why? I’m fine with staying at home. You go if you want to.”

We were walking with Zoë on the highest ridge of moorland on the far side of the stream from his house. The hills were lushly green around us, the sky dotted with bright, slow-moving clouds whose size was almost too enormous to fathom. It was a perfect day, and yet I was dissatisfied.

“Don’t you get tired of the same views?” I huffed impatiently when he gave me a look. “Yes, I know it changes from day to day, but wouldn’t it be nice to look at something entirely different? Like the sea?”

Potter was silent for a few moments. He called Zoë away from a bird’s nest that she’d found hidden in the grass, and I thought that he wasn’t going to answer me.

“I haven’t seen the sea in years,” he said at last.

“Where?”

“Cornwall. Ron’s brother’s house.”

“Ah, lovely. Wouldn’t you like to see it again? Listen to the waves crash, smell the sea air?”

He smiled. “You sound like a travel brochure. I can’t just show up at Bill and Fleur’s place. They have it warded, anyway.”

“It doesn’t have to be that particular beach. Come on. Just a quick trip,” I wheedled. “We could bring Zoë. She’d probably love it.”

“You really want to?”

I resisted the urge to grab him by the T-shirt and give him a playful shake. To be honest, it seemed like I wanted to touch him all the time now, ever since I had decided that I shouldn’t. Even the thought of brushing my fingers over the curve of his shoulder or the smooth skin of his inner wrist was a small torment.

“ _Yes_ , I want to.”

He looked so torn, I almost told him that we didn’t have to go. But my eagerness (and his eagerness to please me) seemed to make up his mind.

“Okay. But later tonight, when there’s less chance of there being people around.”

“What are you planning to do, run naked on the beach?” I asked, laughing.

“No! I just won’t be able to enjoy it as much if I’m worried about—never mind.”

I knew better than to ask what he meant.

“Can we go before it’s completely dark, at least? There won’t be much to see if we go at midnight and it’s pitch black.”

“Yeah, fine. Do you know a place?” He sighed when I shook my head. “All right, I’ll find someplace away from any towns after lunch. Just pop in and out quickly to scout it out. Will that do?” he asked me, as if I were demanding that he help with some unpleasant chore, rather than proposing a nice outing to the seaside.

“That sounds lovely. What do you mean, pop in and out? How do you know where to Apparate if you’ve never been there before?”

He gave me a significant look, and I shook my head. Apparently, Apparating blind wasn’t a problem for him, whereas I’d likely end up splinched or a mile out to sea if I tried it.

When the sun was slipping below the horizon, I waited on the doorstep while Zoë barked her displeasure inside—Potter had decided to leave her at home in case dogs weren’t allowed at this particular beach he’d found. He emerged from the house carrying a shimmery piece of fabric that he handled with reverence. After closing the door behind him, he moved close beside me and flung the cloth over the both of us.

“It’s an Invisibility Cloak,” he told me. “Don’t ask, please. I want to wear it in case someone’s there when we appear.”

“Merlin,” I breathed, lifting my fingers to touch the slippery material around us. The world beyond the cloak looked slightly hazy. Before I had time to wonder at this priceless artefact, Potter pulled me tightly against his side with an arm around my waist.

He Apparated us to a tiny crescent of beach between the waves and a small cliff. The smell of the briny water filled my nose immediately. A few yards in front of us, the ruffled edge of the sea slid over the pebbly shore, and far across the wide stretch of grey-blue water, the horizon was already darkening into night.

Potter craned his head beneath the cloak to make sure there weren’t any Muggles nearby. Once assured that we were alone, he pulled off the cloak and draped it over his arm.

“Where are we?”

“Still in Yorkshire. Near Whitby. There’s a walking path along the top of the cliff, but we’ll be out of sight if anyone comes by.”

He watched me while I looked at the waves, seeming to wait for my approval.

“It’s a beautiful spot. Thank you. What do you think?”

“Very pretty,” he said. “And, er, I forgot how much cooler it is by the water.”

I rolled my eyes, annoyed that he was feigning enthusiasm for my sake. I walked to the water’s edge and squatted down to trail my fingers in the water. There were a few gulls coasting on the breeze and I thought about transforming. I’d never flown over the sea before. But Potter would probably just stand around like a lump who didn’t know what to do with himself if I left him alone.

Determined that we both get the most out of this rare outing, I retreated from the water’s edge and began taking off my shoes and socks.

“Come on. We’re going to wade,” I declared. “And don’t say you don’t want anyone to see us. We’re not doing anything that breaks the Statute.”

Reluctantly, he followed my lead. With our trousers rolled up to our knees, we navigated around any pointy shells and rocks to the water. When he hesitated, I took his hand and led him in so that the water lapped around our calves.

“There, is this so terrible?” I kept our fingers laced together so that he couldn’t retreat. “You’re not scared of the sea, are you? I should have asked.”

“No, I’m not scared. I just… prefer to be home.”

I studied him while he looked out to sea. His hair stirred in the breeze, but his face was as expressionless as if he were watching an egg fry.

“There’s nothing here to bother you, though. There’s no reason why you can’t enjoy yourself a little.”

I heard the peevishness in my voice, but Potter pulled his hand out of mine before I could speak again, and more patiently this time.

“I only came because you wanted to,” he said, and turned and waded back onto the beach.

I watched him find a boulder to rest against while he waited for me. His eyes were fixed on some distant point offshore, like a stubborn child.

For the first time since I’d come to live with him, I felt lonely.

As I stood watching the sea heave in the fading light, I thought about the future in a way that I generally avoided. “ _Just get through today”_ had been my mantra for so long—since I was sixteen, really, and dropped into the nightmare of an imprisoned father and a house full of monsters. Worrying about the looming mountain of months and years ahead of me had long been too overwhelming.

Now, with Potter sulking behind me, I began to consider what my life would be like in another year or five or ten. He was my only companion, the only person in the world who cared if I lived or died. And yet he was so determined to stay cut off from other human contact.

How long would I be able to bear the kind of solitude that he’d resigned himself to, maybe even relished in some ways? It was a choice that I was going to have to make one day, when the monotony and the isolation became unbearable—or Potter decided that being alone was preferable to my company.

The mere thought of it coming to that, of walking away from him, twisted painfully inside my chest. He wasn’t going to change. Whatever strange magic had made its home in him, had altered him, was not likely to fade. I was the one who would need to adapt, if I were to stay.

There was a splashing behind me, and I looked over my shoulder to see Potter walking back into the water towards me, looking contrite. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, resting his forehead against my hair.

I covered his arms with mine to show him I wasn’t angry. Looking across the water, I thought of all that lay beyond the sea—the Netherlands, then the grand cities on the Continent, and beyond that, the exotic, sun-baked countries that I’d only read about. Those were the places where I might still be able to work towards my dream of redemption, of accomplishment and respectability.

But Potter’s chest was warm against my back. His breath was tickling the shell of my ear as he held me close. He was solid and real and so dear to me that it ached. The wispy, shapeless dreams of a different future seemed like ghosts compared to him.

I slid my hands over his bare forearms, allowing myself this one, forbidden caress, then pulled them away by his wrists.

“Let’s go home,” I said.

***

On a dull afternoon a few days later, I set down my book (a rather depressing “romance” between a Yorkshire farmer’s daughter and the sullen, vicious lad her father had taken in) to go to the window.

“The rain has stopped. Do you want to go for a walk?” I asked Potter, who was slipping into a doze in his own chair. “Some fresh air would wake you up.”

“Nah, think I’ll go take a nap,” he yawned. “Want to take Zoë with you?”

“If you’re not coming, I think I’ll fly. Sorry, girl,” I said. She had perked up hopefully at the sound of her name.

The air was wonderfully cool and misty after the rain. I transformed and took to the sky eagerly. Despite the fog hanging over the moor, I flew with confidence. This was my home territory, and every tree and stone was mapped out in my crow’s mind now.

I strained my muscles to fly upwards above the green curve of the hill behind the house, enjoying the wind pulling at the tips of my wing feathers. There was a hush over the moor after the rain, and I thought of the Golden Plovers and young hares sheltered in the vegetation below. I almost felt like I had the world to myself. I circled around until I came to the place where the waterfall splashed, hidden below the trees, then followed the stream over the Thestrals’ grove.

It was over the bare, stony patch where the water curved that I was attacked.

Sharp talons sunk into my back. I twisted against them, trying to free myself as the white glare of panic and pain seized my mind. A glimpse of tawny brown feathers, the wicked curve of a predator’s beak. Desperately, I flapped against its head and wings. The rocky ground below loomed closer as we plummeted together.

I almost broke free as we struggled, but I was seized again. My breast was seared with red-hot agony as the talons punctured my skin, my muscles, my fluttering heart.

The world turned white, and I fell.

***

The world was white.

Then it was dark.

Then white.

Something was pulling at the very centre of me, wrenching me into pain and blackness, then losing its grip again. The bright place was painless, empty and silent, and then it wasn’t.

Two voices.

One sounded like Potter’s, I would swear it did. The other was deep and cold, like stone beneath the earth or the darkest seabottom. They were speaking to each other, Potter shrill at first, then forceful. The other was unmoved, and I felt myself pulled between them.

_—his time—_

_—NO—_

_—with his parents and kin—_

_—won’t let you—_

_—not for you to—_

_—BELONGS TO ME—_

With a terrible roar of anguish and a mind-crushing surge of power, I was dragged into the suffocating blackness. The sensations of my body came back in an excruciating rush—pain, cold, wetness, the press of the uneven ground against my back and the weight of my sodden clothes.

And I felt the consuming heat of Potter’s magic.

And I heard his pleading words.

And I lost consciousness.

***

I woke in the bed, too weak to open my eyes.

There was a sheet draped over me, up to my chest, and something heavy was leaning against my left shoulder, shaking slightly.

I managed to turn my head slightly, and the weight disappeared.

“Oh, god, oh, god. Draco,” Potter rasped near my ear. Trembling fingers swept my fringe off my forehead. “Are you awake?”

With great effort, I nodded slightly. He exhaled in a gust, and slid his hand beneath my head, lifting it.

“I need you to drink these. A Blood-Replenishing Potion and a Strengthening Solution.”

The cool edge of a glass vial pressed into my lower lip. I opened my mouth and let Potter tip the potions into my mouth. After I swallowed, he lowered my head back onto the pillow and took my hand in both of his.

I dozed off and awakened several times after that. Potter was always there, silent even when I stirred. I managed to get my eyes to open enough to see him briefly, a silhouette in the dim room, so close that I could catch the familiar smell of him and hear him sigh.

It was evening when I woke fully, still exhausted but clear-headed enough to register the sounds of Zoë moving nearby and the taste of the potions clinging to my tongue. Potter helped me drink some water and asked me how I felt.

“Tired, but otherwise all right. What the fuck happened? I was flying and then…”

I shook my head as the jumbled impressions and memories came back to me. Light and darkness. Pain and release and then pain again. Potter’s voice. His face now, hovering over me, was starkly white against the dark rafters above him.

“You died,” he choked out. “I was sleeping, and then _I felt you die_. You were in the water when I found you. I can’t even remember how I got down there. And I carried you out and you were—”

He curled over until his head was back against my shoulder, weeping, gasping for air between sobs. I tilted my head against his and dragged my arm over my chest to push my fingers into his hair, just as I had when he’d woken from a nightmare. As he shuddered, I tried to make sense of his words, tried to piece back together the events of the afternoon.

“Harry,” I murmured into his hair. “I’m okay. Please stop. I’m okay.”

He took a few deep breaths and sat up. After he’d cleaned off his face and drunk some water, I made him lie down next to me and explain what happened.

“The last thing I remember is the falcon catching me and falling as I tried to get free.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, then turned on his side to face me.

“You were back in your human form when I found you. You must have transformed when…”

I reached up and touched his cheek, comforting him. “Go on.”

“I got you out of the water, but _he_ was already there, trying to take you.”

“Who was trying to take me?” I whispered, looking into his wide eyes.

“Death. He was there to take your soul across, but I made him give you back. I wouldn’t let him have you.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Potter took off his glasses and ran his hand over his face. He looked awful, but I was relieved to see that he didn’t look like he was hysterical or hallucinating.

“I know it sounds unbelievable,” he said. “I’ll explain more later, when you’re not so tired, okay? I’m pretty sure I managed to heal everything, but I think I should take you to St Mungo’s later to have a Healer check you.”

“I think I’d like to know now, please.”

“Draco,” he sighed, “It’s a very long story and I want you to rest.”

“Just… repeat what you already said. I was dead.”

“Yes.”

“And you convinced Death to let me live?”

Potter shifted beside me, uncomfortable. “I _made_ him release you. And as soon as you were back, I healed you.”

After a few beats, I said, “You told him I belong to you. I heard you.”

“Oh,” he breathed. “You did?”

I nodded. My heart was beginning to fill with hope, like a dry streambed after a rainstorm. His story, the way he was looking at me, the roughness of his voice from crying—I was almost breathless with hope.

“Do I?” I asked, grazing his jaw with my fingertips.

He released a gust of breath and propped himself up on his elbow. “Only if you want to. Wait, don’t answer yet. You need to hear my story first, when you’re stronger.”

“Then tell me… do you belong to me?”

“Yes. Yes, Draco.”

I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck and pulled him towards me. Our lips came together clumsily as he lost his balance, but then he reached across me to prop himself up with his hand on the mattress. He kissed me again, more gently this time, making soft sounds like he was about to cry again. I was too weak to kiss him like I wanted to, like I’d dreamed of doing for so long. Gripping his hair and opening my mouth in invitation would suffice for now, though.

“Love you. Love you so much, Draco,” he murmured between kisses.

In spite of my heavy limbs, in spite of the roof over our heads and Harry’s arm tucked around my waist, I felt like I was flying.

***

Harry made me wait two days before he explained what had happened when I’d been attacked by the peregrine falcon. First, he cast Glamours on both of us and Apparated us right in front of the Reception Desk at St Mungo’s—which shouldn’t have been possible, but spared us from having to walk there from an Apparition Point in Muggle London. The Healer gave me a clean bill of health, though he did look suspicious of Harry’s vague story of an animal attack and his decision to try to heal me himself.

I could tell how on edge Harry was the entire time we were at the hospital. It was only after we got home and I kissed him that I tasted the sickly sweet remnants of a Calming Draught on his lips. He shook his head somberly when I teased him about it.

“You’ll understand when I tell you everything. _Tomorrow_ ,” he said firmly, before I could ask.

Harry sat me down beside him on the bed for the conversation he seemed to anticipate as much as a trip to the gallows. Without a word, I took his hand and waited for him to begin.

“The only people who know this story are Ron and Hermione, and they were worried that I’d gone a little mad after they heard it,” he began. “It’s going to be hard to believe, I know, but I swear it’s all real.”

“Okay.” After he looked over at me with imploring eyes, I added, “I’m not going to run screaming out of the house, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’d like to think I’m made of sterner stuff than that. I’m fully prepared to believe you, no matter what you tell me. And I remember a little of what happened to me already.”

Harry took a deep breath and gripped my hand.

“You know ‘The Tale of the Three Brothers’ from _Beedle the Bard_ , yes?”

“Of course. Every child raised in the magical world knows those stories, almost by heart.”

After seeming to deliberate with himself for a moment, he got up and went to the trunk at the foot of the bed. With the slippery bundle of fabric in his hands, he sat back down next to me.

“A cloak that would hide the youngest brother from Death,” he said significantly, holding it out to me.

I shook my head, confused. “I don’t understand.”

“Have you ever heard that the brothers were rumoured to be from the Peverell family?” He waited until I nodded. “The last Peverell married a Potter, and this cloak has been passed down through the Potter line ever since.”

I levelled an incredulous look at him. “Are you saying that this is _the_ Cloak of Invisibility from the Three Brothers story? It’s a fairy tale, a myth.”

“No, it isn’t. Or, rather, the essence of it is true. Death created three powerful artefacts and tricked mortals into accepting them as gifts. They really exist, and they’ve been passed down through the generations—or have changed hands by force—for hundreds of years.”

“And you ended up with the cloak,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral despite my skepticism. “So, the wand and the stone are out there somewhere? Do you know who has them?”

“Dumbledore got the wand. It was the one he won from Grindelwald when he defeated him.”

“ _What?_ Was it the one he used while we were at school, or did he hide it somewhere safe? Did he know what it was?”

“Yes, it was the one we saw him with all those years. And he did discover what it was eventually, and so did Voldemort. Do you see why he stole it from Dumbledore’s tomb? A wand that was unbeatable, if the story were true?”

“Bloody hell. But it wasn’t unbeatable for him, because… Oh, _bloody hell_.” My head spun with the memory of Harry’s words while he and the Dark Lord circled each other in the Great Hall at Hogwarts. “Because the wand was loyal to you. Because you took my wand from me after I disarmed Dumbldore.”

Harry smiled, grimly. “How’s it feel to know that you were the master of the most powerful wand ever created?”

“Oh, _fuck_ no. Don’t tell me that now.” I covered my face with my hands. “Anyway, I never touched the damn thing. Was it really—”

“The Elder Wand? The _Death Stick_? Yeah, it was.”

“And that came to you, too. You had two of them.” Horror crept over me as I realised where he was going with this story. My palms were slick with sweat, and I wiped them on my trousers before I asked, “And the third? The stone that could summon the souls of the dead?”

“Dumbledore found it the summer before our sixth year. Or rather, he stumbled upon it when he was looking for something else. That’s a story in itself. The important part is that he recognised what it was and he left it to me when he died, hidden inside a Snitch.”

“So you had all three.”

“I had all three.”

“And whoever possesses all three will be—”

“The Master of Death.”

I closed my eyes and tilted my head against the headboard of the bed. The room was silent while I tried to wrap my mind around what Harry had told me. An innocent children’s tale—albeit a grim one—turned out to be darker and more real than I ever could have imagined. Harry’s story felt like a fable that had come to life before my eyes, like an ancient creature awakening from a long sleep. I reached towards Harry, seeking out his other hand.

“You commanded him to give me back, to let me live,” I said softly, wondrously.

Harry pulled my hand to his lips. “I did.”

I opened my eyes and looked at him, studying the familiar features and the uncertainty in his eyes. Here was a man who argued with Death and won, who used his unfathomable power to heal me. And here, also, was the man who loved me enough to save me. It was like seeing him as I did as a crow, one moment a black silhouette, and the next, a grown-up version of the boy I’d met in the robe shop when we were eleven.

“Is that why you’ve shut yourself away? Are they all here?” I asked, looking at the trunk.

“No, just the cloak. The stone I left in the Forbidden Forest during the battle and I’ve never been able to find it again. I tried to give the wand back to Death after the battle, but he wouldn’t take it, so that’s back in Dumbledore’s tomb. The wand won’t go back to Death until its last master dies undefeated, he told me.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Did he pay you a friendly visit?”

The very thought made me shiver.

“No, I called him to me, once I put the pieces together. I felt so… unlike myself after the battle, with all this fucking magical power that I didn’t have before. And there were some other strange things. It was bloody terrifying.”

“What other things?”

“What I saw when I looked in the mirror. And the Thestrals,” Harry added, smiling. “Whenever I set foot in the Forest or the Hogwarts grounds, they flocked to me, and I could understand their thoughts. They sort of—” He made a gesture to show he wasn’t sure how to say it “—addressed me as ‘Master.’ Ron and Hermione thought I’d gone ‘round the twist when I told them.”

“I can imagine,” I muttered, but quickly added, when I saw his distress, “ _I_ don’t think you have. But it must have worried them.”

“Yeah, well, telling them that Death came by and confirmed that I was really his Master and that there wasn’t anything I could do about it definitely didn’t help.” Harry leaned back against the pillows, pulling me against his chest and waiting to speak until I’d settled beside him. “They wanted me to see a Mind Healer. Or an Unspeakable, which would have been even worse. Can you imagine if the Ministry found out I have this much magic?”

“They’d treat you like an experiment,” I ventured.

“They’d _use_ me like a goddamn weapon, Draco!” His voice shook with anger as he said it. “I’m done saving their arses. The Ministry did fuck all to stop Voldemort until it was too late, until some teenager took care of the problem for them. I don’t owe them anything, and certainly don’t trust them to act in anyone’s interest but their own.”

I wrapped myself around him more closely and waited until he relaxed again.

“You’re right, they would do that. But why live here, away from everyone?”

Harry ran a hand over my back and then my bicep while he considered my question.

“I told you. I felt you die,” he said quietly. “I can feel it when anyone nearby dies, and it’s… the most awful, awful thing, Draco.”

“Oh. Does it hurt?”

“No, not physically. It feels like something being torn away from the world. The place where that soul was becomes this terrible, empty hole. It’s hard to describe. I experienced it enough times after the war ended that I knew I needed to live far enough away from other people that I’d be safe. It would have driven me mad, especially if I’d stayed in London.”

“You took me to St Mungo’s,” I said, pressing my face into his chest. “That’s why you needed the Calming Draught.”

“Yes, well, thankfully nothing happened while we were there, but I was worried about it the entire time, I admit.”

“I understand now why you’d rather not go places if you can avoid it. You always put off going to the shops.”

Harry hummed in agreement. “Cities are the worst. So many people. And hospitals and care homes and, Merlin, I don’t know what else. Traffic accidents and suicides. Oh, god, I’m sorry, Draco! I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s all right. I know you weren’t... trying to bring up bad memories for me.”

I listened to his heart beating beneath my ear and thought about my mother. When he’d found me in the stream, Harry must have experienced that same horror and shock that I had when I’d found her. I know I’d have done anything to get her back, if I could have.

“Well, that’s the story,” Harry said. “You didn’t run away.”

“No, and I don’t think you’re a lunatic, if you’re still worried about that. Thank you for telling me.” I sighed heavily into his T-shirt. “What happened to you isn’t fair. It isn’t a burden you should have to bear on top of everything else you went through.”

“I wouldn’t have been able to defeat Voldemort without the Hallows. So many things went my way out of sheer luck, like you disarming Dumbledore and me taking your wand. I can’t say I wish it had happened differently, because then he might have won.”

“Mmm,” I agreed drowsily. “And you can talk to animals now, kind of, so that’s neat.”

“Not all animals,” he chuckled. “Just the ones with, er, certain associations. You need to sleep some more, I think.”

There was so much I wanted to ask him, reassurances I wanted to give him, too, but I didn’t argue when he nudged me down onto my side so that he could curl up behind me.

 _I’ll tell him later_ , I thought as I drifted off. _I can tell him everything now._

***

“Can we go for a walk?” I asked after we’d finished the washing up from dinner, side by side in front of the sink.

“All right,” Harry said, setting down the tea towel to cup my jaw. “But no flying, please. I need to figure out how to keep any falcons from coming through the wards first. I should have done that a long time ago. It’s my fault you were attacked.”

I was warmed by his protectiveness. “No, it was stupid of me to go out in the fog, when I couldn’t see something coming towards me. I won’t make that mistake again, wards or no wards.”

“Thank you. Okay, that’s done.” He hung up the tea towel and called for Zoë. “Let’s go. But tell me if you feel tired and I’ll Apparate us back to the house.”

Zoë frolicked around us as we walked up the hill, taking our time so that I didn’t get out of breath. Across the slope, the heather had almost soaked up enough summer warmth to bloom. We stopped at the top of the rise to look around with the evening sun warming our backs.

“You said I should wait until I heard your story,” I said quietly, “to make my decision.”

Harry turned to me, his face betraying his uncertainty and fear. I wasn’t going to keep him hanging.

“I’m not going anywhere. Don’t look so worried,” I said, smiling. “I need to ask something of you, though.”

“Anything,” he replied fervently. “If it’s something in my power to do, I will for you.”

“It’s nothing so grave. You needn’t look like you’re prepared to break into Gringotts again for me.”

He laughed. “Oh, well that’s a relief. It was a close thing getting out last time. What is it, then?”

“I know you’re content to stay here almost all the time, but I think I need a change of scenery besides going to the shops once a week. I need to talk to other people.” I took his hand and squeezed his fingers. “It’s not that I get tired of you. I think I’d just _stagnate_ if I were here all the time.”

“Okay. So what do you want to do? Find a job?”

“I’d like to, but I don’t know if my luck would be any better now than it was last autumn. I saw some signs for a school in York that has art classes—painting, drawing, those sorts of things. I think I’d enjoy that. I don’t know anything about Muggle education, but maybe there are some lectures I could attend, too, to keep me busy. I’ve always liked learning new things.”

“Of course. I think that’s a good idea. I can help you fill in the forms and give you money for the tuition and supplies. I like your drawings.”

“Thank you. They’re not much, I know, but I’d like to get better at it. And if I can find a job somehow, I’ll pay you back. I don’t relish the idea of living off your gold.”

“I have more than enough for both of us,” Harry assured me. “What else?”

“That’s it, really. I promise not to drag you to the seaside or anywhere else, if you’d rather not. I know that would make you unhappy.”

“I want _you_ to be happy, too, Draco. I don’t expect you to stay shut away here, like I am.” He took a deep breath and moved in front of me so he could clasp my other hand. “The offer to help you start over somewhere still stands, if you ever change your mind. Just say the word, and I’ll do it.”

“I haven’t forgotten your promise. I’ll tell you if I ever need to go. But right now, I can’t imagine ever wanting to.”

I pulled my hands from his and wrapped my arms around him.

“Doesn’t it scare you a little, what I am?” he whispered.

“I’ve seen you as others can’t, remember? I’ve seen all of you, and I love you.”

“Draco.” He said it roughly, with gratitude and joy and hope. “I love you, too.”

He shifted his grasp around me and kissed me so fiercely that I made a muffled cry of surprise. I tilted my head to better align our mouths, and I kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him.

Clumsily, we lay down on the grass. The ground was uneven and the weight of him draped over half of me pushed a small stone into my back, but, _Merlin_ , I didn’t care. He _wanted_ me—not just as an unlikely companion in his self-imposed exile; not to keep like a creature he’d caught and given a home.

He ducked his face into the crook of my neck, smiling, when we stopped. With a gentle hand in his curls, I held him there, looking up at the sky. Zoë found her way back from her explorations and lay down, panting, beside us.

We were alive.

We hadn’t given up and we could go on together, instead of alone.

 _I’m going to be okay, Mother_ , I thought. _And I believe I’m going to be happy._

**Author's Note:**

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